


the life span of a rat and how it's longer with a little help

by acecharlie



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Bi Roadhog, Canon Typical Violence, Dead relatives, Depression, Eventual Sex, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Friendship/Love, Gay Character, Gay junkrat, Genital Mutilation, Junkrat Centric, M/M, Minor Character Death, NOT ALL OF THIS IS CANON OBVIOUSLY, Night Terrors, Oral Sex, Origins, PTSD Jamie, PTSD Mako, Partners to friends to lovers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Some bad language, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Traumatic Experience, Trigger warnings:, Violence and Gore, bi character, eventual happy ending!!, rape and forced prostitution, spans over quite a few years, this is a bit of a rough fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 21:46:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 52,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acecharlie/pseuds/acecharlie
Summary: Jamie was leaning on his flesh arm, looking at Mako, who had long since fallen asleep. Watching his chest and big belly rise and fall filled him with a certain peace and safety. Knowing he was here next to him, on a real bed of all places, in a base for fucking superheroes filled with other people who also cared for him.All he could think of in that moment was how much of a far cry that was from a 17 year old boy in some settlement in the Australian Outback with not even his own body to his name.--Junkrat's (non- canonical) story told from gruesome unhappy beginning to fought-for happy end. Otherwise known as: How Jamie came to see good in the world through Roadhog and (eventually) Overwatch.





	1. Hopeless // One

"Jamie!" The screaming embedded itself into his brain, loud and panicked, in a way that he had grown familiar with.  
   
"Mama!" He could hear himself scream back as if it had just been yesterday that he saw his whole world fall apart.  
   
"Run, Jamie!" Her voice... it was haunting.  
   
The voice of a ghost. Someone that meant a lot to him and yet someone he never knew. His mother. Sweet, gentle, kind. Her hands healed his summer day wounds and wiped away his winter night tears. Her eyes smiled down at him and offered their warmth, their safety. He knew she was beautiful. But he didn't remember her face. He knew her voice flowed like a river, a river that stirred up a pot of emotions inside of him, but the only words he remembered her saying were in cold fear. He knew he loved her. His mother. But he didn't remember what that love felt like. He didn't remember what it felt like to love a parent and know they loved you as well, to have them hug you and know they were never really letting go. He remembered, however, what it felt like to run. To run away from the warmth and into the cold dead night. And he knew what his mother sounded like when she was being killed.  
   
Screaming. His earliest memory.  
   
One that woke him up every night since then.  
   
It had been six years since the omnium had exploded. His mother hadn't died immediately like his father had, but she had stayed alive only a few days. Maybe it was a week, maybe it was just two days. His memory had a habit of rapidly fading and leaving him grasping at wisps of something that used to be. It had been mercenaries that got her. After the explosion, there was nothing in the outback that kept everyone in check. There was no order and protection. People went out of line maybe the next day. They thought it was the apocalypse. What did it matter if they killed someone if they were all going to die anyway, right?  
   
It was a fucked up mentality, but there was no one to stop them from murdering and stealing and raping and turning the already destroyed plains around them into more of a shitshow than it already was. And Jamie hated them. Hated them with a cold, hard hatred for the screaming that haunted him every night in his dreams. He'd wished many times he'd been stronger, older, not four years old at the least, so maybe he would have been able to fight them. To save her. Her voice only called to him to run away but sometimes, his guilt made her sound like she was begging him to come back and help. Like he'd been a coward, and when they'd caught her, he'd run instead of staying, when he knows that's not how it went. It was hard to convince yourself of the truth when you had no memory to support you anymore. His mind had kept that screaming locked inside him for so long that it was so malleable, so easy to morph into something else to terrify him in the night when there were no more mother's hands to wipe away his tears. Sometimes he wondered if he would remember his own name, had her lips not screamed it in the time of her agony that was now so deeply embedded inside him.  
   
He was ten now. Not much older and yet feeling like he'd spent decades in the desert. In the junkyards, with all the other orphaned kids to remind him he wasn't special and his pain meant nothing when everyone else's pain was pitted against it.  
   
He was better off than a lot of them, he knew, many had lost their mind already. He was on the way to that but at least a few more years off. He was in a junkyard where you could at least find a lizard or two if you were smart like him, and there was plenty of trash to mess around with. Plenty of scraps to pull together to make into something new that could defend him from everyone else in this goddamned place who always tried to steal his fucking food.  
   
He was much smaller than everyone else there. Everyone was thin to a degree, obviously since they lived off of fucking lizards, but Jamie had been scrawny and thin even before all of this had occurred. He'd figured out from the early days about a year ago when he'd dragged himself through the sand to this place that he would need to use his wits if he wanted to ever survive amongst other kids, older, tougher, bigger. He knew the only thing he really had that could compete against them was his mind, and his ability to create. His creations didn't go as far as to kill, but making his own device to fling rocks had helped him both defend himself and catch his food more easily. Aiming was hard, but he was making improvements every day.    
   
The other kids in this dump didn't like him very much. He'd tried to make friends but everyone seemed to always think that he was too loud, too annoying and shifty and seemed to scuttle and move too much. The only ones who seemed to want him around were the older kids, the self-proclaimed leaders of the dump, who liked to punch something every once in a while. He didn't like them very much at all. They made his stomach and his ribs hurt.  
   
He was racketing around in a trash pile one day, looking for sturdier metal that he could mould into spikes for his weapon when he felt a hand on the neck of his shirt lift him up and toss him with incredible ease. He couldn't have weighed more than 20 kilos anyway. It was the same fucking gang again, he figured, looking over his shoulder. And sure enough, it was them three, Marty, Beaver and Canon, Canon probably the one that had tossed him. It was always them, like the ragtag fucking group of badass kids with weird names.  
   
"G'day." Jamie chirped through the pain in his neck from where the shirt had momentarily choked him.  
   
"You shut up!" One of them shouted, it was probably Beaver, as they advanced on him and Beaver and Canon held him up, holding his arms so he couldn't run and then folding them painfully behind his back.  
   
"Been a while, hasn't it? I sure haven't missed you but you seem to be missing me, judging by how friendly you're being back there--" He was cut off by a punch to his gut from Canon, the air being forced out of him as his body got ready for the pain he was surely in for.  
   
"Do you ever shut up?" Beaver asked him and they all laughed at him, knowing what the answer was and watching him cripple in pain as more punches came, not willing to hear him talk again.  
   
"No, he doesn't. He doesn't stop wriggling either, like a fucking rat." Marty said as he proved their point by scuttling around and trying to escape their grip.  
   
"He even looks like a rat." Beaver agreed with his buddy and they all laughed again.  
   
"Does that mean you look like a beaver? Because the teeth certainly agree with that--" Jamie spoke up only to be slammed down on the ground and kicked, his ribs screaming from the pain the action caused.  
   
"Shut up! You're fucking nothing, Fawkes! Nothing but a little rat playing around in the junk. Fucking worthless." Beaver screamed at him, throwing a punch at him, clearly offended.  
   
"Yeah, an annoying little junk rat." Marty added and Canon grunted in agreement.  
   
"You watch your back, fucker. Unless you like eating dirt and getting knocked out by Canon's fist." Beaver warned and they all had a good laugh at him as they left him there, to rot with the junk.  
   
"Junkrat.." Jamie murmured as he got himself up off the pile he was thrown in and wiped the dirt from his clothes.  
   
He'd fucking blow them all to smithereens one day. And he’d laugh.

He’d live to see a day where he didn’t believe them when they called him worthless.


	2. Hopeless // Two

"Food." Magpie grunted at him and threw him two lizards and something that looked really disgusting, which might have been a rat. Junkrat didn't complain about it, however, just grabbing them and gobbling them down as quickly as his stomach, which wasn't used to eating per say, could take. 

It had been Magpie's turn to find food today. And Jamie's to find water, which he had. It had been hard and he'd traded a bunch of junk that he had originally wanted for it, but they lived to see another day yet. He'd finished before Magpie, so he was busying himself by messing around with crap in their corner of the junkyard, which had grown in size considerably since he first found himself here. He wouldn't call his and Magpie's situation domestic, but they were definitely having each other's backs, and had been for a little while now.

Jamie, or Junkrat, had only recently hit a growth spurt. 

From a mere 1.60 cm, he had magically, as if almost overnight, grown to be 1.85. And the growth was more than welcomed by him. 

The others stopped picking on him as much, and he guessed it was because they didn't find it as fun to kick around someone who wasn't very clearly beneath them. He was happy with his height because now he actually was starting to look like a runt of the desert, all tall and harsh in the face and covered in dirt, probably carrying a bunch of bacteria that no one wanted to think about and surviving on scraps and nothing else. It wasn't a look that he favoured, despite popular belief, he actually really liked being clean. But that feeling was so long gone now that he didn't even remember it enough to wish for it back. 

The fact that he was taller also gave him more strength, which was still little because of his weight, but it still meant that he could go up against others of his age. Which was something he'd been looking forward to doing.

Fights among the others were very common in the desert, both as a way of 'sorting things out' between two or more people that had beef between them, but also as a very popular form of entertainment. In the junkyard with nothing to do but sit around and scratch your own ass, these fights, when they started being held, were like a blessing. Kids would be pitted against each other and they'd fight, dirty and bloody, for as long as it took for one of them to give up, or to die. The dying part was a fair bit more common, because backing out was seen as being a coward and no one in the desert liked cowards. At the beginning of the fight, both competitors put up something valuable of theirs as a bet, and then the winner got everything. The valuables were determined as worthy or not by the match maker, one of the older kids called Dirt, who was about eighteen and was actually pretty laid back, chilled out. He was constantly high off something that he managed to find, and Junkrat wondered how he wasn't even dead yet sometimes.

Junkrat had never had much interest in the fights himself. He couldn't care less for seeing someone get their innards ripped out, and he couldn't participate himself. But around the time that he was gaining height, there was always the thought in the back of his mind. He'd seen people win stuff to last them the next month just by beating someone to the ground, and he'd never gotten blood on his hands before, but that was because his blood was always on other people's hands, and what good would it do for him to start caring about others. 

So that was where the idea of participating arose. He had never actually talked to Magpie about this, however. And that was possibly going to be a problem. 

Magpie wasn't precisely his friend. No, not really, they'd never called each other 'friend' or anything mushy like that, because in the outback, it was hard to show that kind of emotion and not be worried someone was going to gut you. It was hard to show trust.

Jamie couldn't help feeling like Magpie was his friend anyway.

Magpie was actually a kiwi, but he'd moved over with his parents when he was a kid, before the omnium blew up, because of the state that NZ was in at the time. Jamie had thought many times about how much his parents must have regretted it. 

He was older than Jamie by three years, or maybe four, time ran weirdly when you lived in a post-apocalyptic environment. So Magpie was maybe sixteen, or seventeen when Jamie was thirteen. Jamie didn't know his real name, and Magpie didn't know Jamie's real name. 

They were known only as Magpie and Junkrat.

Magpie looked his age and maybe older, he was a serious looking kid. He shaved his head so he didn't have to deal with it and had dark brown eyes and dark skin, and he said a lot that he looked like his mother, who had been Sudanese. His father had been Maori. That was just about the extent of the things that Jamie knew about his friend. He also knew that they called him Magpie because one time, before Jamie knew him, he participated in a fight where he had a technique of jumping down, or 'swooping' onto his enemy, which ultimately won him the game. Everyone called him Magpie ever since.

That was the only fight Magpie had fought, and he knew from experience how dangerous it was, which was why he didn't do it again, as he told Jamie.

He and Magpie were 'friends' since two years ago, when Jamie was eleven. 

They'd met when Jamie had accidentally run into Magpie when running away from the usual crowd that liked to chase him. Magpie, instead of being angry, had told the others to fuck off, which they had (that one fight Magpie won had had its effects) and then helped him up and introduced himself.

Jamie was pretty sure that was the first time anyone had shown him an act of kindness in his life. That he could remember.

So he stuck to Magpie like glue, which Magpie initially didn't like, but in the end he got used to Jamie being clingy with him and accepted his fate of being "friends" with Jamie. They were both outcasts, even among this crazy, irradiated world of other outcasts. 

"Did anything useful today?" Magpie grunted at him as soon as Jamie had finished his food and gone back to messing around.

"Not really, just been thinking.." Jamie started, thinking of a way to bring up the fights to Magpie. Not like he felt the need to ask him.. he was his own person, Magpie didn't own him or anything.

Junkrat waited for Magpie to ask him what he'd been thinking about, but it seemed like Magpie didn't care, as he was just nodding his head, ending the conversation. Junkrat gave him an expectant look, but seeing Magpie not even acknowledge it, he sighed and spoke again.

"About the fights."

"No." 

Junkrat jumped back at the suddenness of Magpie's exclamation, eyes widening and mouth opening and closing for a while before he found the right words to say.

"Why not?" He asked, aware he sounded like a kid nagging his parents.

"Because I said so, Rat." Magpie's expression didn't even change at the words. 

"You know it would help us…" Jamie said quietly, looking down. 

"I also know that you're a kid. You're not doing it and that's final." Magpie said, harshly, and Junkrat didn't know when he'd started letting Magpie act like his father or something.

 

He dropped the subject for now, knowing Magpie wasn't going to be swayed. He was strong headed and bold, much more than Jamie was ever going to be. 

The way that they'd ended up annoyed him sometimes. Magpie didn't used to care about whether or not Jamie was just a kid. Whenever Jamie mentioned that he did something dangerous, he would shrug his shoulders and turn away as if Jamie's life and state meant nothing more to him than the weather. 

But after the time they'd spent together, things started getting a bit different. The words he'd thought previously about how it was hard to show trust in the desert rang in his head. Is this what trust felt like? People telling you what you should and should't do? And besides, how did Magpie come to care anyway? Did it even matter to him what happened to Jamie?

No. It didn't. Jamie was adamant about reminding himself of that over and over. 

The desert was a hard place to live in. 

Jamie was almost too sure that he'd forgotten what being cared for felt like. And this wasn't it. It wasn't.

He'd prove it to himself. A wave of what felt like teenage rebellion swelled up inside him as he decided he was going to do the fight anyways. What was the worst that could happen? He'd fight and maybe win (or maybe lose but he didn't focus on that), and then Magpie would suck it and shut up with his whole care thing. 

Jamie was aware somewhere in his head that that was a bad idea but Jamie was full of those and he'd never especially gotten into a habit of ignoring them. 

 

****

 

It was Jamie's turn to get food the next day and thankfully it didn't take very long, as he needed to find something that day that he could put up during the fight, so that he could participate. 

The food that he'd managed to get for them was a small rabbit, not looking much like a rabbit anymore, the radiation had had its effects on everyone and everything. He brought it back to their corner of the junkyard, obscured by large chunks of metal that protected them from the sun, from the mildly dangerous rain and from the others that they cohabited the junkyard with.

He got started on the fire right away, outside their little establishment. Certain things they caught, they could be eaten without any cooking at all, like the lizards and rats that Jamie had eaten yesterday. But rabbits and the such were dangerous to devour without cooking, as they could make you very sick, and they avoided eating them raw, only doing it when they absolutely could not light a fire, like when the scavengers came.

Among them in the yard, everyone had their own little groups and their hierarchy. But even Cannon and his group, even the kids at the top of the ladder knew to stray far from the scavengers. The adults.

Jamie had never actually seen them. He knew they would be the kind like the ones who killed his mother. They came to the junkyard every now and then and took scrap, and maybe even robbed a kid or two if they happened to be in their way. Most of the kids in the yard knew that they would be left alone if they just hid out in their own little corner and didn't do anything to interrupt the adults, so they stuck by that. When they showed up, the yard would fall in silence as they all hid. Fires would be put out and no one would talk until they left, which sometimes was a whole day later. Magpie and Junkrat had saved up food in case that ever happened again, which left them quite safe if they were ever in need of hiding. 

Junkrat finished up with the food just as Magpie came back with a container of water, half full.

"That all?" Jamie asked, not bothering with a greeting, his heart sinking at the sight of the water.

Magpie nodded, almost sadly, and gave the container to Jamie. "Ration it, this one is yours. I have mine somewhere else." 

Jamie looked at him suspiciously, but took the container. Where else would he have his own water? It seemed suspicious, and Jamie had a fleeting thought that Magpie was giving up his own water for Jamie. He shoved the thought away. Magpie didn't care about him. He didn't care.

"What's for din dins?" Magpie asked, his stomach rumbling on cue.

"Rabbit." Jamie said as he took it off the fire. "You came just in time."

He served them up and they ate in silence, knowing darkness would spread soon and kind of happy once more with their turnout, done before sunset, so they were both safe. They tended to avoid going out in the darkness, so finishing up like this before then was always good for them both. Deserts got cold in the night, and the people that walked around then were even colder. 

They ate quickly, no time for savouring when someone could swoop in and steal your dinner, also knowing sadly that this was their only meal for the day. They were low on the lizards. 

"I found this, also." Magpie said as he finished his dinner, having forgotten to mention this before. 

He took out something from his pocket and handed it to Jamie, who took it gladly and looked at it. It was some sort of tooth, on a string. Jamie looked up at Magpie questioningly.

"It's a dingo bone. Someone in the city killed one." Magpie explained.

Rat's eyes went wide and his smile wider. The city was where they went sometimes to trade, or to find other shit. And dingoes, well, they had become just as irradiated as the rabbit they had eaten, only they'd become huge, deadly. The dingoes, their ferociousness had only grown. They were the most feared animals around the desert and no one dared approach one. But now, someone had killed one.

"Who the hell did that?" Jamie asked, putting the sharp tooth on some junk next to him, looking at it with glee. Magpie knew that Junkrat loved all kinds of little things he could draw his attention to.

"Some huge dude called Mako. No one fuckin knew who he was until then. I think it was a sort of establishing move, Rat. He's making himself known. Don't know why, but he might have plans. Heard he was some sort of scavenger." Magpie replied. 

Jamie continued looking at the bone, interested in this guy called 'Mako' all of a sudden.

He wondered what he looked like.

"Speaking of scavengers, we should get inside." Magpie said with dread as a few figures were slowly approaching the yard, the others hiding, a hush falling over them. 

"Shit, yeah." Jamie agreed and they quickly rushed inside, after stamping out the fire. 

Jamie had just heard the sound of the rusty metal gate opening, male voices loud and threatening, when he had a sudden realisation. He peeked out, panic in his gaze, and sure enough, he'd left the bone out, right there, glaring at him from a distance. He cursed himself.

He didn't want them to take it, it was his, Magpie gave it to him. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. And then he dashed out, Magpie trying to grab after him, and failing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment if youre likin it so far!!!! :3c


	3. Hopeless // Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo this took me a while but i got so into writing again that i uploaded two times in a day lmaooo, leave a comment if youre liking it!

Jamie felt his heart seize in his chest as he made a run for the bone, knowing he can get there fast enough before being noticed and run back, and hopefully he would be okay. He barely spared a look to the men he knew were near, and his ears had been blocked by adrenaline, he could barely hear if they were near him.

He was about to reach it, the run having taken him only a mere second, before someone was in his way, and he ran straight into them. He grunted and fell to the ground, looking up in fear, pain in his body from the fall. 

A man stood above him, and he was ginormous. Not only was he tall, but he was big as well, his stomach evidently what Jamie had run into. The fact that Jamie was on the ground made the man look even more ginormous than he must have been when he was standing up. 

Jamie's body was frozen. He was dead. He was fucking dead.

"What do we have here?" He heard someone else say, another man coming up next to the one in front of him, somehow scarier although smaller. He had a menacing grin on his face. 

Jamie slithered back a bit as he noticed three more men behind them, his breathing hard and his throat choking up. 

Before Jamie could say anything, the man in front of him put his hand up and stopped the other man from coming closer. 

"No." He grunted, and the other man scoffed and moved back, as if his fun had been ruined. 

Jamie's eyes shot quickly and involuntarily to the tooth, just behind the man. The man must have noticed his look, because he looked behind him, saw the tooth, and with a bare moment of anticipation for Jamie, he grabbed it, and handed it straight to Jamie, who's hand shook as he finally forced it to reach up and take it. 

He looked to the man's face, where he hadn't looked before in fear of making eye contact. He noticed he couldn't make eye contact anyway. A mask, over the man's face prevented that. Jamie felt more fear pour inside him. The man looked truly like he lived through the apocalypse, with his mask, his eyes nowhere to be seen. The man looked back at him, and Jamie felt exposed by the fact that the man could see his eyes, but he couldn't see the man's. The man looked away after someone from the group shouted at him.

"Come on Mako, fucking move it you pig!" And just like that the man was gone, and Jamie was still frozen on the ground.

Mako. That was the dingo killer. 

As he dashed back to be shouted at by Magpie he thought of Mako's hands, and the way they'd handed that tooth to him. How small it had looked in his giant fist. Jamie, to his horror, did not feel a trace of fear when he thought of that, but rather maybe a different feeling that he wasn't very accustomed to.

Magpie shouted at him for ages before he finally moved away and Jamie lay down on the ground next to him to sleep, looking at the tooth in his fist. 

Maybe Magpie really did care about him, after that shoutfest that he just had. Maybe even, the fights weren't a good idea. Jamie was still stuck with this uncomfortable feeling, so he closed his eyes and let Magpie take first shift, going to sleep as quickly as he could, to enjoy some sleep before he had to get up and switch shifts with Magpie. 

**

It was really hard to forget about the dingo man when the very next day, they were still there, and Magpie and Junkrat were getting hungry. 

The only thing that they had stocked up that week was another rabbit, and it was definitely not cooked, but the close call that Jamie had had just before was enough to convince them that they could not light another fire, and it was really not a good idea. 

"We've eaten shit raw before, it'll be fine." Magpie had told Jamie, seeing how worried he was looking.

Jamie couldn't help but think that it would be worst for Magpie. He was almost too sure that Magpie hadn't had water yesterday, and that could lead him to some problems if he coupled it with some raw shit, filled with bacteria.

Not that Junkrat knew about that shit. It just worried him. He didn't say anything else, worried that Magpie would realise he was worried about him. 

"Okay." He spoke, his voice hushed, "I'll pull it out." 

He got and skinned the food and they quietly ate it, numb to the texture and flavour. 

** 

It didn't take too long after the scavengers left, maybe two days later, for Jamie's fears to be proven correct. Magpie was sick. 

With what, he had no knowledge of what exactly he was sick of, which made it very hard for him to help him. He was waking up every night with a fever, and he was constantly sweating. His neck was throbbing, and he burnt to touch. Jamie was on his feet for the next week, finding any drop of water that he could for Magpie.

"This isn't working out." Magpie would tell him. "You need to ditch me out and go on, you won't be able to continue on like this." 

"You shut your fucking face, Magpie." Jamie would always reply. That would be the easier option and he knew it, and he couldn't lie and say he'd never thought about it.

But Magpie cared about him. Magpie was the only one who cared about him. Magpie was the only one who had his back. Jamie shivered at the thought of being alone. At the mercy of every Mako of the world, many of whom were not as merciful as Mako had been to him. 

"I'll get you something. I will."

Junkrat really suddenly remembered the fights. 

**

With his chest bare under the sun, only a week later, he made his way over to the 'ring', whole rabbit and some matches he'd found in hand. He could give this up, given the right opportunity comes that he could gain something out of it. 

He knew others in this encampment had managed to get their hands on medicine. Since he didn't know what kind of sick Magpie was, there was no way to know that any kind of medicine that he could possibly get his hands on in this hellhole would actually do anything to help with his condition, but he had to try. He had to. 

The amount of blood that he had to sit through before he got to something that interested him was insane. Almost enough to have him turn right around and leave. Part of him hoped that he stood a chance, but Magpie's earlier words were beginning to make more and more sense with every new person that came into the ring, one of the two doomed to leave one way or another. 

Many fought like their lives really did depend on this fight and Junkrat knew that may well be the truth for many. A win could mean supplies for a week. That was why many boys went into this not caring if the outcome was a loss. They were going to die anyway, they thought. Either of starvation or dehydration or from this fight. Many of them didn't care anymore.

Junkrat had thought before many times how it had happened that this establishment of sorts happened to only have boys in it, and he tried to remember the last time he saw a girl or a woman since his mother. Whatever the chances, it had happened, and looking at the fights in front of him, he was almost glad. God knows what would have happened to women among all the crazy, irradiated beasts of boys that knew no touch of love or comfort, every day growing stronger or taller. He wondered how women fared off. He was sure they were growing stronger too, but just as he was at the mercy of many boys around him, women would be just so. The only difference was that women were desired in some way, while he was not. There was no incentive to come after him. 

He busied his mind with thoughts like that while he tried to distract himself from the blood that was splattering by every end of the fight, the winner taking his shit and leaving, having gained both food and the respect of his peers.

It was maybe 3 fights in that Junkrat noticed something shinning in the victory basket, a contender up in the ring waiting for an opponent to volunteer. A vial. He turned to the boy to his left, one he hadn't talked to before, and spoke.

"What's that vial?" He asked. He wasn't paying attention when it was called out.

"Some kinda medicine, man. Don't know." The boy shrugged, but Jamie had enough information. 

"I'll contend!" He shouted over the babble around him and entered the ring, dropping the rabbit into the basket, looking at the boy he was to fight.

He was not one of the bigger ones, but he was way more muscley than Jamie could ever dream to be. Jamie had the height advantage here at least, which was rare. The radiation had given basically everyone an obscene growth spurt. He was among the shorter ones there. 

"Junkrat in the ring!" Dirt called in his stoner voice, having the habit of calling out the names of the contenders he knew since he was the one that organised the fights.

There was a mumble from the crowd and some laughter, but Jamie's ears were blocked to the noise. He was only waiting for Dirt to shout for them to fight, and it was that simple. He was going through what would help him win here, where to hit and which parts to steer away from, how to dodge. He knew very basic things, less than he should probably. He thought of Magpie back in their hole of a home and his heart picked up pace. He channelled whatever anger he had inside him, and the second he heard Dirt's voice announce the fight properly begun, he waited for his opponent to pounce, knowing he had more chances if he didn't take first swing.

Thankfully, the boy he was fighting seemed to be more the aggressive fighter and he dove straight in with a battle cry, leaving Jamie room to dodge his attack and deliver a sharp punch to the ribs. Jamie stuck his leg out as well, trying to trip him, but the boy had picked himself up from his failed charge surprisingly quickly and he didn't fall for it, turning right back around and seizing Jamie's arm, which he hadn't taken away from his ribs fast enough, bending it behind his back until Jamie let out a cry. 

Jamie wrenched himself from the boy's grip and swung at him, only nicking him on the face slightly as he dodged out the way. That was enough for Jamie to turn himself to face his opponent and ready his arms upward, defending his face as a punch came for him. He threw one right back and then stepped forward to step on the boy's foot, distracting him enough so he could punch him in the stomach and throw him to the ground when he keened over. 

Jamie stood back as his opponent was on the ground, feeling winded and not wanting to attack him while he was down. There were no rules in the fights, but Jamie still had basic fucking decency. He stood back, taking deep breaths, as the boy got himself onto his feet again, and charged like he had at the beginning of the match. Jamie didn't have enough time to dodge this time, and he was hit straight on, the force carrying him to the ground with his opponent on top of him, straddled by his legs to hold him down. Jamie held up his arms to defend himself and tried to roll himself over so the boy would fall, but he failed, and soon he was getting a plethora of punches to the face. 

Blood was swelling in his mouth and he could feel his entire face stinging as a whole. His chest pounded loudly. He couldn't take it. He couldn't take it. He had to stop. 

With his right hand, he brought it down to the ground and slammed it three times, at which point Dirt came in and took the boy off of him.

Jamie lay on the ground like that for a while, until he was told he had to move, at which point he dragged himself off and through the crowd, all throwing insults and sniping remarks at him as he passed, more disappointed in himself than he had been before. Magpie was right. And Magpie was going to die because of him.


	4. Hopeless // Four

Jamie didn't know if Magpie noticed the blood and chose to say nothing or if he was too out of it to look at Jamie properly, but either option was equally as unsettling for him. 

The blood faded away and the bruises slowly went down but Magpie wasn't getting any better and the shame and the teasing wasn't going away and Jamie didn't know what to do. He had run out of options. There was nothing left that he could do but continue to try and find the coldest water possible and the best cooked food that he could but even that couldn't continue on forever. Not in this state that he was in currently. 

Rat was realising more and more each day that the possibilities of him making it alive while he was also taking care of Magpie were getting slimmer and slimmer. 

He was on the 6th day after the failed fight, on his behalf at least, when someone showed up at his metaphorical doorstep right after he had come back from getting water for Magpie, as he usually did.

With his shoddy memory, it took him a second to realise who the person was, even if he had seen them only a week beforehand.

It was the boy that was standing next to him that he had asked a question. 

"You're Junkrat, yeah?" the boy asked him, and Junkrat narrowed his eyes at him, suspicious and curious at the same time. 

He was worried that he'd come here to kill him for being a coward. He'd already had that fear for a while, as he had been one of the only ones to back out of a fight. 

"Yeah, that's me." He finally answered. 

"You don't need to worry, I'm not here to hurt you. I just had some information that might be useful to you. Can I come in?" The boy asked, and Junkrat squinted at him.

"I think we can talk just fine here, if you don't mind." He let his worries be known in his tone of voice, and the boy seemed to accept them. 

"I just wanted to tell you," The boy started, leaning a bit further in to offer the information, "That vial of medicine you had your eye on? I found out where they got it."

Jamie's eyes widened at that, and he leaned back a bit, looking around. He didn't want anyone to overhear this information, if it was something that could eventually help him and Magpie.

"Maybe you should come in after all." He finally stated stiffly and let the boy in, in whatever privacy their dump of a metal cover could offer.

"Thanks." The boy said, tucking himself in after Junkrat, "I'm Rebel." 

"Nice name." Junkrat replied, not really caring at all. 

Once Rebel was 'in' per say, Jamie pointed to where Magpie was asleep, his eyes showing that if he was woken up there would be hell to pay. Rebel didn't seem interested in causing any trouble, however, and the fact that he was willing to offer this information in the first place was making Junkrat both a bit more relaxed and extremely uneasy at the same time. He was curious as to why Rebel would ever drag himself here to offer someone that sort of information at no personal gain. 

"Is he who you needed it for?" Rebel asked, but the look on Junkrat's face made him realise that he needed to spit it out, so he put his arms up defensively and started talking.

"I heard from Dirt that the dude you fought, Exploder, he got the vial from a crew in the City. The Headbeaters. They've got a load of the shit stashed away and they charge it real expensive, but they don't keep a real good eye on it, apparently." Rebel leaned in close as he whispered "Apparently, Exploder got in and out with a few good vials without even being noticed."

Junkrat's eyes widened, "Are you kidding? You better not be fucking with me."

Rebel smirked at him "Strong words for someone who got his ass beat real hard." When Junkrat only glared at him, he moved on, "I'm being serious, though." 

"How would I even get in there?" Junkrat questioned. 

"That's not for me to say." Rebel said "That's all I know." 

"Well um… Appreciated." Junkrat said, awkward about having to say thank you to someone.

"That's all I wanted to say." Rebel said, getting up and waving a small goodbye, Junkrat not waving back, too caught up in thinking about it.

The second that Rebel was out of there and Jamie felt like he was sufficiently far away, he turned to Magpie.

"You awake?" He asked, looking at his friend's lying form, facing away from him.

"Yeah." He said, but he didn't turn to look at him. "You're going, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Jamie said, simply, having made the decision on the spot.

"You shouldn't." Magpie said simply.

"I know." 

**

The City wasn't very far away. It was a bit of a walk but mostly, the worst thing about it was that Junkrat was forced to wear a shirt under the hot sun so he wouldn't get blisteringly burnt to the bone, his pale skin having a tendency to turn red even before this whole apocalypse, probably. 

He had a whole one shirt that was shoved away somewhere to keep it from getting stolen by others, clothes being extremely rare in the current conditions that everyone was living in. He pulled it out only when he needed to travel, which wasn't very often. He didn't used to care about getting burnt, as he would much rather not wear a shirt than actually have to. But after a few times of getting severely burnt and having absolutely no way to soothe the pain, he decided to take Magpie's advice and wear one when absolutely necessary. 

He got so fucking sweaty. It was like swimming in rat scented water all up under his shirt, whenever he chose to wear one, and he almost immediately regretted it. 

So when he pulled it out in anticipation of the trip that he would have to take, it put him off it even more. That's not to say he wasn't going to go, of course, no matter how much Magpie whined from his metaphorical death bed, only with more death and less bed. 

Junkrat had spared no time as soon as he had the information from Rebel getting ready. He had no way of knowing what he was going into, but he had a way of setting up Magpie for as long as he could before he came back. 

He worked twice as hard, which was already hard enough before he'd gotten himself beat up with no way to fix it, and soon enough, he had enough to last Magpie for two days, which in his opinion was more than enough. He could do this, he could get in and get out before Magpie even noticed he was gone. 

It was a bit of a gamble leaving him alone in the first place, but the way that Jamie saw it, he was going to either die because he had no medicine, die waiting for Junkrat, or he was going to live when Junkrat came back. This was what determined his decision to actually go out and potentially get himself killed. Magpie would normally be having a fit about this, but in his current state, he could do nothing to protest. Plus, Jamie was fairly sure he had turned 14 by now, which was way older than 13. He could do this. He was basically an adult, by outback standards. 

He hadn't realised at what point the line was crossed between his relationship with Magpie being casual and being actually caring. He didn't remember when they actually crossed that metaphorical line that made them feel closer to each other, like siblings Jamie dared think. They'd had no one else in the world and then all of a sudden they had each other. Jamie knew he was lucky for having him, but he also knew that he wasn't ready to let go of him yet, selfishly so, maybe. He knew Magpie was suffering and had offered his own death multiple times. He couldn't do it. He couldn't let him die like this, and he didn't know who he was doing it for. All he knew was that everyone ended up well off in this situation. Magpie got to live, and he got to still have Magpie. 

He set out fairly late in the day, to avoid most of the sun that didn't go down until very late in the day, and knowing that he would have more chances if it was later when he made his break it, as they'd be more vulnerable during night time. He'd have more time to get his bearings to figure out what was going on. With him he had some water, and a knife. He hadn't taken food with him, as he couldn't carry too much, and the water was only for the walk to there, as he hoped it'd maintain him until he got out as well. The knife.. well it was in case things got out of hand. It was Magpie's, but he had told him to take it when he'd realised he had no power over Jamie's decisions in his current state. 

The walk wasn't as bad as he remembered. It didn't take half as long, only maybe an hour from what he could tell from the sun. He hadn't been to the City in such a long time that the sight of actual buildings, no matter how run down, was startling to him. The people that lived here, one dirtier and scarier than the other, would shoot him looks as he walked past, and finding the place that he was looking for didn't take nearly as long as he thought it would. 

It seemed that these Headbeaters were not nearly as subtle as he thought they would be. In fact, they seemed to be running the show. There was always someone or some group who was, until they got killed by someone else who took their place. That was one of the reasons that Jamie preferred the Junkyard to the City. Because of not living there, or going there often, however, he'd be very behind on any new political extravaganzas that happened to befall the City at any given time. And this seemed to be the newest one.

A building, the biggest, and a bit farther away from the other buildings, surrounded by what looked like certain traps and maybe even mines buried messily under the red sand of the desert. Jamie was acutely aware of the sign on the building that read, in massive letters, 'Headbeaters' and then some other writing that Jamie did not know how to read. 

He could read words he was already anticipating most of the time, and since he knew the word Headbeaters, he knew that when there was a letter he thought was a H followed by a few others he recognised, that was probably what was being said. He could come to that conclusion. He was much better with numbers than he was with letters and he had been since he was a child, he thinks. In all truth, although he did not know this, the sign continued on to say 'Stay Out or Stay Dead'. It was better that he couldn't read that in the current moment. 

He walked closer to it, seeing that there was no fence or anything around it, but mindful of the traps. His mind raced as he thought of a way to go around this, before realising he could literally go around the building and check for any weaknesses in the construction, which he would surely find. 

So he stepped away, cautious once more of the traps and hyperaware that they were there at the same time. He circled the building, finding they obviously didn't have cameras as he expected, but it didn't kill him to be cautious about cameras, as he'd found out in previous experiences. He checked the perimeter a few more times, as the building wasn't abnormally large or some sort of embassy, but rather had maybe 5 rooms inside, one of which was sure to be the one that he was looking for. He could hear voices from inside, but they started to wind down as the sun did as well.

And he spotted it on his third time around, because his eyes were bad and he was bad at paying attention, but there it was, and even though it was small it was certainly his only way in undetected. 

A window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit gets real interesting next chapter and im about to post it sooooo


	5. Hopeless // Five

The window indeed was hard to crawl through. Jamie had the advantage of weighing and looking as close to a human coloured branch as possible, but he still had some trouble squeezing through, which made him think that he would have to take the bad way out of there, as in the front door. He assumed the reason the window had been allowed to stay there in the first place when the building was taken up was because they obviously thought not many people could fit through that, which was the truth. 

He did, however, and he landed with a thump, as the window was really high up in the room. He couldn't believe his luck when the very window that he had decidedly crawled through ended him up in the very same room that he was looking to find. The room was filled with those weird vials that he had seen, as well as food enough to make him hungry and water that he thought maybe he should also nick some of. The only problem was. He wasn't the only one there.

A guard, in a chair, his blonde unwashed handlebar moustache the only hair on his face, shifting as he breathed in and out in his sleep. Jamie could not believe his luck. Not only was the window that he saw leading him to the room he was looking for, the guard inside it was asleep when he undoubtedly shouldn't have been.

Jamie wasted none of this great opportunity, and grabbed three vials, as many as could fit in the pockets of his green cargo shorts, as well as a small bottle of water, which also thankfully fit into his pocket. And he couldn't believe it. How luck was on his side like this. He'd done it. He only had to get out now. Sure enough, as he thought, the window was too high for him to climb back out of without shifting furniture to stand on to reach, but the only furniture in the room was the chair that was being sat on. So he had to take the front way out. That was okay, he was good at running. 

He walked quietly to the door, still mindful of not waking the man up. But to his horror, when he reached for the handle (a handle! On a door! A door in general! How weird), the door was locked. And just to fulfil his fears in this situation, he turned around with a look of dread and saw it. A chain of keys, hanging from the man's belt. Only one key on it. This must have been the only door in the entire place, which made sense as to why they'd kept all their important shit in there then. 

Jamie knew what he had to do now, and he gulped as he made his way over to the man, small and quiet steps. His fingers were steady, thankfully, and he reached for the chain with ease, finding that grabbing it was the easy part. Taking it off the belt required a lot more effort.

He dragged it slowly, stopping in anticipation every time the man would mumble in his sleep. He looked peaceful like this, but Jamie's thoughts strayed to how not peaceful he would look if he woke up in that very moment to a kid stealing his keys with vials of their shit in his pockets. 

Jamie held his breath as the last bit of the keys came through the belt and he was holding them, or rather it, in his hand, a smile on his face as he immediately went to unlock the door. But then, as he was putting the key in the hole, shifting was heard behind him.

"What.. what the.." The man was mumbling.

Jamie noticed, with a jump in his heart that made his feet go numb from nervousness, that he was waking up. He unlocked the door as quickly as possible and without a second thought to the cries that he suddenly heard, he ran. 

It was easy to coordinate himself so that he could find the front of the house and to run there, and he found his run uninterrupted, out the front door. He noticed that the front door was also a door, as he was going through it, but this one did not have a lock on it. When he made it out, he had a thought about closing it behind him, so he did, and with a nearby plank of wood he blocked it up as well as he could, knowing any time he could give himself mattered. And then he was running, manoeuvring the field of traps quicker than he thought he would. He found the hope sneaking into his head that they wouldn't catch him after he made it through the field and, although he could hear shouting from inside as everyone woke up and tried to figure out what was happening, no one was after him yet. The door wasn't even being beaten down yet. He smiled to himself. He really thought he'd done it.

The split second where he let his guard down was enough for things to go to shit. He had just turned a corner and was out of sight of the building, thinking he was away from it all, when he was suddenly stopped by a debilitating and incapacitating pain in his leg, from the knee down, and he was brought to the ground, a scream leaving his lips. With growing fear, he looked down and realised that that was his leg, caught in a trap. Mangled and bloody, and with every movement, the metal teeth of it dug deeper into him and grazed against his bone. He was struggling to keep his screams to himself. He knew there was no getting out of this kind of trap. He knew it. He couldn't wrench it open, although he immediately tried, knowing it wouldn't help him in the slightest. He knew they'd be here soon. How long could the door hold them back before they beat it down, and how long would it take them to run across their own trap field? He didn't have time, he realised quickly, he didn't have time.

But then he realised something else. He didn't have time, but he had a knife. And a shirt on his back. And maybe that would save him.

He wasted no time taking off his shirt an ripping off a stripe of it, tying it around his leg over the knee, to serve as a sort of tourniquet to stop the blood flow that was sure to continue even more. He kept the rest of the shirt for after he had done it. He had enough adrenaline in him to do this, surely. He knew he'd pass out, but maybe if he ran on this adrenaline, he could run the high and go somewhere else. He didn't know, he didn't know what to think in the moment. All he knew was that there was no chance he was getting killed by them. The ones in the house. He had to get this shit back to Magpie. He had to.

With this motivation, he pulled out his knife, bit into his shirt, took a long breath, and he placed the knife above his knee. With a sudden jerk of his foot, repeated a few times, he felt the bone under his skin break, just about where he wanted it to, and with tears running down his face and screams stifled as best he could, he started to cut. 

Breaking the bone was the hard part. The most painful. The next part of cutting through the skin was just disgusting. He tried to ignore the squelching of his own skin, and the fact that he was in so much pain and he was whimpering and screaming was enough to distract him a bit. He sawed through, he powered through, he couldn't believe he was doing this all at the same time. He didn't know how much time he'd taken. How much time he had. He was sure it wasn't enough. He was sure. But then all of a sudden his leg broke away and he was free, and he had no time to think about possibilities. He wrapped his leg tightly, more so his blood wouldn't leave a trail, and turned around onto his stomach, holding the knife and dragging himself away. 

He dragged his body on the ground and around the next possible corner, and sat himself against a wall. Oh no. He was faint. He was feeling faint. Oh god. He was going to pass out, he was going to.. He had to stop himself, he had to.. He tried to stop unconsciousness from taking over, but the harder he tried the more he found his eyes shutting involuntarily. 

He couldn't do it.

His world turned black. 

**

She heard the screams. It was late, but in this city she never slept right, not when she knew the residents. She knew she was feared, but she still didn't allow herself much sleep.

She was sure even the heaviest of sleepers had heard the screaming, though. 

But none of them responded as fast as she. 

When she dragged herself out of the building she called home, she saw him slumped against a wall, and she noticed the leg very first. She realised she didn't have much time. Her doctoring experience told her enough about this that she knew he would bleed out in a matter of a few minutes unless she got him inside right now and fixed him while he was still asleep. 

There were voices nearby, and she didn't swell on them a lot, but she knew they were looking for him.

"Fucker sawed his own leg off! He couldn't have gone far."

"Find him!"

"Thief!"

She ignored them. She was glad he didn't weight as much as he should for his height in that moment, because dragging him in became a lot easier. 

He was on the table the second, his leg out of the bonds as soon as she got her stuff, and then came the gruesome part. The bone had to be cut shorter, so she could fold the skin over it to cover it, and as she applied tons of antiseptic, she whipped out a saw, barely having time to clean it properly, and she got to work.

Once the bone was shorter and she had fixed the nerve endings and the arteries as best she could, she folded the skin over and she sewed him back together, the stress leaving her heart as soon as the bleeding stopped, knowing she had potentially saved him. She disinfected it again, and she wrapped it up in new bandages. The second she was done, she could sit back and finally look at him. 

He was dirty, his shorts covered in blood around his right leg, which now was lacking, and he had a mucked up face, covered in dirt that seemed to live there. Once she looked past it, she could tell that he was young. Maybe 15 at the most. Her heart clammed up for him.

She remembered in moments like these why she was here. Who she was supposed to take care of. Kids like him. He had the stolen stuff in his pockets, but she didn't bother taking it away from him. She was sure he stole it out of need. 

There were voices outside her single room house, but they faded away after they could not find what they were looking for. 

It was maybe an hour later when the kid's eyes opened slightly, and he groaned.

"You need to rest." She said shortly, and although he didn't stir he seemed to be alarmed by her presence, unable to truly act on it.

"Who the hell are you?" He murmured, with as much power as he could muster.

"The one who fixed your leg. Who are you?" She replied, making him look down to check that she was saying the truth about his leg.

It was like he had forgotten that that had happened, because he started breathing loudly. "Oh god, oh God, my leg…" he started, and he seemed to be freaking out, which made her step in, calming him down.

"Don't think about that now, you need to rest, okay? Nod that you understand me." She said sharply. It seemed that in his dazed and vulnerable state, he could do nothing but agree with her and hope she wouldn't kill him.

He nodded and whimpered a bit. She smiled down at him.

"What is your name?" She asked, and he replied.

"Junkrat."

"Nice to meet you, Junkrat. They call me shrike."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope all y'all know who shrike is ;)) leave a comment if you liked it!


	6. Hopeless // Six

Junkrat woke up fairly early the next day, too early, considering the trauma that his body had just undergone. Later, thinking back, he thinks maybe that his conscience told him he'd been away from Magpie too long. He doesn't know. 

So called 'Shrike' was as surprised as he, but didn't urge him to get back to sleep this time, knowing that a day could mean millennia to junkers and dwelling in a foreign place for a long time made them uneasy. 

When Junkrat woke up, he had more time to survey his saviour, he supposed he should call her. She was old, from what he could tell, her hair starting to go white, and he estimated she was in her mid-fifties. She had dark skin and one, cutting eye, the other (or lack thereof) was hidden behind a pirate style eyepatch. She had a tattoo under her one eye, and she wore a lot of layers, including a top layer of nice blue, including a hoodie. Junkrat was shocked by the amount of layers mostly. He wouldn't have been able to stand it. 

"Morning." She said, with a kind smile gracing her old voice. Junkrat nodded back at her, sitting up on the table, right where he'd slept. 

"Um.. I supposed I need to say thanks. For ..my leg." He said, looking at her, uncomfortable about owing her shit. "Suppose you'll want something in return, but I can already tell you that I don't have-"

"I don't need anything." She cut him off, and he was stirred to see that although she had a genuine smile on, her voice and her eyes did not match it. He wondered what she had seen in her life. 

"What do you mean?" He was confused by this. She had done something huge for him, how could she not want something in return?

"You don't need to worry," Was all she said, "I don't need anything, and I doubt you have much you can give me." 

Junkrat simply looked away, unsure about her words. It was impossible not to want something of him. He finally strayed his attention away to what he'd dreaded looking at, his leg. Or maybe what he was now lacking there instead. The sight of it made him sick. His stomach felt like it would actually empty of it's miniscule contents, and his eyes teared up. He was horrified by this especially, and he looked away.

"I have to go." He said suddenly, remembering Magpie. "I have someone to look out for." 

"Is that who you want those things in your pockets for?" She didn't spare a second asking. 

Junkrat was still uncomfortable in the situation, at meeting someone who asked him personal questions like this, who took care of him at no personal gain, who was smiling at him and showed no sign of wanting to kill or rob him, even if she knew what he had in his pockets.

"Is your friend sick?" She asked "I may be able to help. I know a thing or two about diseases." 

Junkrat immediately became even more worried and cautious. Okay, this was getting weird.

"I don't think you need to do that." He said, "You don't need to continue to help me. I still won't have shit to give you."

"Like I said, I don't need anything. I can offer some information, if you want. Like if what you have is going to help your friend." She said, and it almost sounded like bait, but Junkrat was already weak enough, on her table, with one leg, with no hope, and he immediately had to know.

"He… He had raw rabbit. It got him really sick." He said, briefly, hoping she had some sort of answer for him.

"Oh, I see." She seemed to be thinking, "What the Headbeaters have stocked up will help. You need to keep him hydrated, though."

Junkrat nodded, looking around the room, needing something to support himself on to go back. He had to make some sort of leg, even if something shit, something that held on until he got back. He wanted to cry, he wanted to sit there and cry like a baby about his leg, but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't unless he wanted to lose Magpie as well. Who knew what state he was in now. He was supposed to be back earlier. 

He spotted a pile of junk behind her, and noticed she'd been talking to him, about his leg maybe, but he didn't care in the current moment. He had to go. 

"Do you need that pile of stuff?" He cut her off, but she didn't seem to care too much. 

"You can grab whatever you want." She said and handed some stuff to him. 

He'd have to pull something together, but he'd make do. He'd have to pull something together from the things that were available. He had to leave now, he knew that. He'd spent too long here.

It didn't take him very long. The Shrike woman was going about doing something, and he was too preoccupied to watch her. The leg that he pulled together was more like a peg leg, that was all it was, fastened around the stump he had left with some rubber, the best he could have done in the current situation. When he stood up on it the first time, it hurt like hell. He bit down the pain, remembering how much worst it had been last night, and took a few challenging steps forward. It'd be hard to get used to, but he had to continue on like this. He'd have time to make a proper leg once he got back to his corner of the scrap yard, he'd have his shit that he used to make stuff. He'd fix up Magpie and then things could go back to normal. Everything would go back to normal. 

"Heading off?" Shrike asked him all of a sudden and he turned to face her.

"I have to. But…" he took a deep breath, "Thank you." He pushed the words out with difficulty, and the smile she gave him was enough of a reward in its own. 

"Take this with you as well." She handed him a bag, and looking inside he found some sort of soothing jelly and extra bandages. "Remember to take care of it, and if you can help it don't over stress it for a week or two." 

He nodded at her, thinking to himself that he wouldn't be able to take it easy at all, but appreciating her help anyway. He put the stuff from his pockets in the bag, waved a short goodbye, and he was gone. 

He had a brief thought as he was leaving that the Headbeaters must have the rest of his leg. He tried not to think about it as he made his walk, ten times more agonising now that he didn't have a shirt anymore and that his makeshift leg was rubbing into him. He knew that the Shrike would have, under normal circumstances, probably told him not to do this. As doctors probably did. But she had understood that he needed to leave. In fact, he wasn't sure he could go to the City again after this. Not at least after someone killed all of the Headbeaters and took their place.

His leg was raw by the time he made it there, but he made it none the less, and thankfully he didn't run into anyone as he made his way to Magpie. Relief settled in his heart the second he was in and he saw that Magpie was right there, asleep, breathing lightly. He smiled at him, sitting down and immediately taking off the makeshift leg. He breathed a sigh as he took off the bandages and put on some soothing jelly, leaning back against the metal behind him. 

He let his stump chill in the air for a bit before he wrapped it back up, leaning over and nudging Magpie awake.

"Get up, Magpie." He said, and Magpie stirred. He still looked like shit, but the second his eyes were open and he saw Junkrat, Jamie could tell he was holding back a smile. 

"You're back." He said, and Jamie immediately handed him a vial "And you got the stuff you were looking for." 

Jamie nodded, almost proud, but knew that it wouldn't take too long for Magpie to notice what was missing.

In fact, the second that Magpie had gulped down the medicine and sat up, his eyes fell to Jamie's right leg. There was a short silence for a second or two, before Magpie looked from his stump to his face.

"What the fuck, Rat?" He whispered, a shocked look on his face. It was the most emotion that Jamie had seen him show.

"They.. they had traps set up." Jamie explained shortly. 

"Jamie.. Jamie for fuck's sake.." Magpie said, and he inched closer.

He hugged him. Magpie hugged him. And Jamie was so overwhelmed in the moment that, to his own shock and horror, he started to cry against Magpie's shoulder.

"Everything will be okay. I'm sorry, everything will be okay." Magpie started saying to him and Jamie wasn't sure where Magpie had pulled this tenderness out of. 

He wasn't even sure if he liked it. If he could get used to it. But in the current moment, he hugged back, no matter how unnatural it felt, and sobbed. 

**

Two days later, Magpie started getting better. And Jamie was thankful for that. He was not in any state in the current moment to be going out like he did. 

The vials lasted Magpie just enough that he took one every two days and he'd finished them in a week, but his sickness seemed to be finished with that as well. He got well enough that his health improved with added rest and as much water and food as they could both find to aid both of them back to a better state. 

Jamie had gotten to fixing his leg. He didn't currently have enough things to make himself a leg that looked and functioned like one, so the peg made do. He fixed it so the attachment was a bit more comfortable, he fixed the joint so it felt more like a knee and less like a stiff broomstick, and he added a few metal parts to make it more durable and to attach and pull off easier.

Magpie had to take more nightshifts from now on, as Jamie had to take off his leg at night most times so it didn't chafe against his stump and open the wound back up again. The stitches that Shrike had used on him apparently had been the kind that just faded away after a while and did not require removal, because one day they were there, see through but tying, and one day they were not. Junkrat assumed it was normal, he had no idea about the advancement of medical sciences, as the only kind of stitches he'd known before this were the ones made from string that was not supposed to be used for the things they used it for. 

His leg made him feel weak most of the time. He kept it on some nights out of fear, but most of the time the pain was too much and it defeated over his fear of having to run during the night, and he slept better without it on. Plus, he was sure that airing it out or whatever did it good. 

Things slowly fell back into a routine. The fear of the crew from the City had faded away, perhaps unrightfully so, but it had been so long now since he'd run away from there that the chances of them finding him became slimmer every day. 

A year had gone by before Junkrat knew it, and he had turned fifteen some time this year. He was not aware of his actual birthday, but he always said to himself that it was sometime around when the nights got colder and the rains started, which was the worst time of year for him. He always felt older around that time. The cold made him feel as such. So he dubbed that his birthday and every year it helped him keep track. 

Things were good. And they certainly wouldn't stay that way.

What Jamie didn't know about the Headbeaters is that they didn't forgive. And they didn't give up. 

It may have been a year, but it didn't take longer after that for them to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe how quickly i am updating im so sorry about that. I just got super pumped about this fic all of a sudden and found I have some free time for once, so might as well utilise it. Once again, please leave a comment if you liked it! It really really makes my day to see those.


	7. Hopeless // Seven

The day that they arrived, Jamie and Magpie had finished up for the day and thankfully were inside. This, perhaps, was what bought them more time. 

It was an important day. It didn't seem like it at first, but Magpie had started talking to him after they'd sat down for dinner, which he usually wasn't in the mood to do.

He'd started it off like this.

"Do you want to know my name?" He'd said, and Junkrat had looked up from his food, shooting him a curious look as the words sunk in.

"Well, do you?" Magpie asked again, and the idea suddenly excited Junkrat. 

He couldn't imagine Magpie as anyone else but who he currently was. He couldn't imagine calling him anything different. His words were always the same and he was always Magpie. But Jamie couldn't deny that there was some part of him that was curious to know. To know who he used to be before all of this. He knew Magpie wouldn't want to be called by his old name, in the same way that Jamie only liked it when he himself referred to himself as Jamie, but he wasn't sure if he'd want others to call him that. And was he even ready to share his own name, something so personal and close to him, something that tied him to a person he used to be that he wasn't even sure existed anymore? The answer, he ultimately decided, was yes. When it came to Magpie, his friend and guide. It was yes. 

"Yeah, tell me mate." He said, playing it cool by eating a bite of his food.

"It's Nikau." Magpie said, "My name was Nikau." 

Junkrat played around with the word in his head. It was very pretty. He wondered if it meant something.

"It's Maori. I don't remember what it means, though. I know my dad chose it." Magpie said, and he was talking in that tone that neither of them used, just sometimes. Like when he'd hugged Jamie. That tone.

"It's nice, Magpie." Jamie said, testing that his friend would still want to be called by his second name. As expected, Magpie smiled at him as if he always knew what to say.

"Mine's Jamie." Junkrat said, feeling like he had to, but also wanted to, return the favour. 

"Yours is nice as well." Magpie said, and he smiled. Jamie smiled back at him.

At first, the touchiness that their relationship gained after the events from a year ago felt both natural and uncomfortable. Jamie was not used to being close with someone, just as he was sure Magpie was not used to being close either. But after a little while had gone past, they had both grown used to it, something that filled them both with completion and fear. To be close with another human being felt like it was right, natural, to have something that all children and adults desire in close human contact. But in the outback, the fear of losing that became all too real every day. Either of them could die, without any warning. Both of them almost had, many times. The thought of one of them left behind after that was scary. 

They never got too touchy, they didn't hug or show physical support to each other much. But smiles and words had come a long way since they were both much younger than they were now, and they supposed it was only natural that even though they'd tried to stop it, time and hardships had brought them closer together. Although the fear still lived inside them about their relationship, there was parts of them that didn't care anymore. It felt too good to trust. Neither of them had lost before, after their parents, so they didn't know. They didn't know what it would feel like to lose someone again.

Jamie felt like he was painfully close to finding out when he heard shouting outside. 

The shouts started when the gate creaked open, all of them hearing it, and shorts started to be fired. Jamie immediately went to his feet, and Magpie did the same. They were glad they'd eaten under cover that day. 

"What the hell is that?" Junkrat asked, listening out. Magpie shushed him so he could hear.

"Where the fuck is Junkrat?!" There was shouting for him outside.

In a moment of panic, Jamie and Magpie realised what was going on. They were here for him.

Magpie immediately grabbed his shoulders. "You have to run right now."

"And go where? Without you?" Jamie had a thousand questions. 

"Just take the quick way out. Run as far as you can go, not to the city, just go!" Magpie said, and when he knew that Jamie wasn't going to go, he added "I'll be right behind you, just go!"

He nodded his head, too caught up to think of saying no. Magpie was telling him to run, and he had to. He had to trust that Magpie would be behind him. 

They had a quick way out which involved a hole dug under their side of the fence. Jamie quickly crawled under, after shoving his shit in his bag that he'd kept from the Shrike, and the second he was out and under the sun, he started running for it as fast as his one fake leg would let him. The sound of his own breath was so loud, and he couldn't turn back, he just kept running, until the sound of the voices was so far away, that he finally slowed down and turned.

"Holy fuck, that really killed me-" With a moment of dread, he realised that he was alone.

"Magpie?" He called out into the air. "Magpie!" He called again.

Magpie hadn't followed him. Magpie had stayed behind. To hold them off, no doubt. Jamie fucking knew he was going to do that, but he let himself believe that Magpie would be following him.

"Nikau!" he called out, "Nikau!" 

But he was nowhere to be found. Not even very far behind. 

He heard a shot in the distance. Just one. And then he heard many. Shot after shot fell and fell until Jamie realised that he had tears down his face. He sat down in the sand and looked behind him. He couldn't go back. But he wanted to.

It was almost night when the cars that were stopped nearby drove away, and Jamie let himself walk back, dread filling his stomach with every step that he made closer. 

He entered the yard, for the last time. 

He was surrounded by bodies. 

He could see that he was stepping on blood from under his shoe. He called out, despite the fear that he would be heard.

"Magpie!" His voice got caught in the air.

The wind was starting to pick up, and he realised something, as he walked past Cannon's corpse on the ground. And later on, there was Rebel. Dirt. They were all there, dead at his feet.

He'd said he'd show them. Somehow this wasn't what he'd meant.

 

The thought of seeing Magpie's corpse and knowing this was his fault was too much for him. He had to leave. He had to leave right now. 

So he walked.

He turned around and he walked away, as the sun dipped in the sky and the day turned into pitch black night, and he didn't know where he was going or even which direction he was heading in. He walked off. 

He cried as he walked in the desert, knowing full well he was dehydrating himself as he cried, but he wailed, openly and loudly. He cried and he cried and he didn't stop crying or walking. He'd killed Magpie. In his fear to lose him, he had killed Magpie. 

The thought wouldn't sink in. Not even the next day when he still walked, freshly out of the last water he had left, baking under the sun and slowly going crazy, it felt like. He had ruined the best thing in his life, it was all his doing. That was perhaps the first time that he felt like he could fall onto his knees right now and die under the sun's gaze. There was no point. There was no living anymore. His greatest fear had come through. He'd cried through all his water, and he'd killed through any forms of people that resembled friends. He was alone.

Just him. Alone as always. 

Looking back at this time, how he walked for that whole day as well under the sun, he thought that maybe this was where he truly lost his mind. One thing was for sure, he could feel himself changing already. He wouldn't trust anyone anymore. He was by himself. That was, if he ever made it out of this desert alive.

There was no God, that was for sure.

His leg started to hurt the second night, or maybe it had been hurting all along and he was too emotional to realise. But once the pain set in, it was hard for him to continue walking. It became harder with every step that he took. 

He was looking down as he walked. 

So much so that when he encountered the next City over, he didn't even see it, until he was collapsed at their doorstep. Voices circled him, but by the time he was being carried off he was already passed out from dehydration and ready to die. 

He later wished he'd keened over in the desert. 

 

CHAPTER ONE, HOPELESS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter one has come to an end!! very quickly
> 
> I know this is a bit fast paced but im a hater of filler chapters most f the time, so i hope y'all are okay with that.  
> It'll probably slow down a bit after this one. And chances are Chapter two will be shorter as well so.  
> yeah!!


	8. Low // One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHIT GETS ROUGH IN THIS CHAPTER, PLEASE CHECK THE TRIGGER WARNINGS BEFORE READING

He woke up in a cell.

His first reaction was to freak out, but he was at this point used to waking up in places he didn't remember going to. They'd taken his leg, and therefore hadn't tied him up. What a nice theory, that he couldn't do anything with one leg. They were very much correct. 

He had very little time to himself to feel emotionally numb before someone realised he was awake, a guard perhaps, and voices were calling about his state.

"You stay still, cripple," There was a laugh from two guards "The Boss will be here soon."

Junkrat was not one bit comforted by the notion that someone who called himself The Boss was on his way to talk to him. And when the Boss showed up, he felt even more threatened. The Boss was a guy in his mid to late twenties, his hair black with peppered stubble on his chin and he was very fit. He had large, black, angled eyebrows, and a smirk on his lips. He was smoking when he came in, and he had a few rings on his fingers, his knuckles covered in dried blood. He was wearing a shirt and shorts, fastened by straps that held guns and ammo, and he had a black cloak over it, with a hood. The smile he gave Junkrat was unsettling to say the least.

The door to his cell was opened, and The Boss was let in. He waved his hand at the guards and they left, leaving just the two of them alone. Jamie gulped as he looked up at the man from the ground.

"Hello," The Boss said. "My name is Frank. But people call me The Boss." He took another nip of his cigarette, the smoke rising up in the room. 

"And you are?" He asked, and Jamie felt like he had to answer, or his blood would be on Frank's knuckles as well.

"J-Junkrat.." He said, and Frank frowned at him.

"Now surely that isn't your real name, sweetheart? So tell me, what is your name." There was more weight in the words this time, making Junkrat believe that he really had no choice but to answer. He watched the smoke go up.

"Jamie." He said shortly.

"Jamie, well done. Pretty name for a pretty boy." Frank said with a smile, and his other hand was reaching for Jamie's face.

Jamie moved his face back a bit, in case Frank was really going to touch him, and he didn't seem to like that. He put his hand down, frowning slightly and sighing, then taking a drag of his cigarette. He blew the smoke into Jamie's face.

"So, Jamie, I have a deal to make with you," He started, "I know who you're running from. I know about the Headbeaters-" Jamie panicked and found pleading words slipping out of his mouth.

"Please don't tell them I'm here.." He said quickly, and much to his distaste, a little whimper came into his tone.

Frank smiled at the show of emotional vulnerability and he swooped in for it like an eagle.

"Well, you don't have to worry. You can live here, if you want to." He started, and Jamie went to open his mouth with words of gratitude, but he was cut off by Frank, raising his hand and continuing to talk. "But. You'll have to pull your weight around here. All of us do. And if you do, I keep you fed, I give you water, I give you shelter and protection. As long as you do what I need you to, okay Jamie?" 

Jamie swallowed harshly, blinking at Frank, knowing he had no choice but to accept but asking anyways.

"A-and what would I do here?" he asked.

"Now you leave that to me." Frank started "I'm sure you have something to offer here, I have people close to me, higher up in our so called ranks, that get a bit stressed now and then and I get them some people to help them relax. Do you understand what I mean, Jamie?"

Jamie thought over the words, but his brain didn't catch the drift, and he was forced to shake his head no. Frank laughed at him, a humourless laugh.

"Well, you're young, you're pretty, there's a lot of men out here who would be interested in you, Jamie. I hate to make it sound so crude, but that's just how things are around here." He said, and Jamie finally caught up.

His eyes widened "You want me to.. to..?"

"It isn't that hard is it? You don't have to do much. And think of what it would earn you! I'd keep you safe from the ones that were looking for you. You could leave all of that behind now…" Frank's words were so soothing that Jamie almost fell for them with every new word that poured out his lips.

"I don't wanna fuckin do that, are you crazy? I'm fifteen!" Jamie suddenly felt anger welling up inside him at the very proposal that he would do something like that. 

Frank stood up with a sigh, the look on his face resembling pity, but Jamie didn't think for one second that it was real. 

"Well I'm sorry, but I won't let you regret this by saying no. I'm doing what's best for you, Jamie." The way he spoke his name made Jamie shudder, and his eyes widened as Frank snapped his fingers and the two guards were called back in, bringing with them one more. 

"You'll learn your lesson, Jamie." Frank said, and he walked out of there, leaving Jamie behind with the three guards, on the ground and at their mercy. 

"Y-you don't have to do that.." He tried to reason with them, his body stiffened up with fear, numb from the realisation of what was to come. But he knew his words weren't coming through.

He started to thrash and shout when the first guard grabbed his arms and lifted him up, holding them behind his back. 

"No! No, leave me alone! Help! Help!" He shouted his lungs out, knowing that no one was coming for him. 

"Shut the fuck up." One of the guards slapped him across the face, the other grabbing his shorts and underwear and dragging them down his body. 

Jamie tried to kick with his leg to fight them off, but found that he was so underwhelmingly overpowered in every perspective that there was absolutely nothing he could do. He was naked in front of them now and the shame and fear was pouring out of every pore.

He didn't want them to touch him. He didn't want their hands on him. But they didn't care.

While two of them held him down, the other touched him, and Jamie was ashamed at the responses his body was having, especially when they pointed it out.

"He's enjoying this. A little whore.." There was laughing around him, and he desperately wanted to say that he didn't want this, he didn't want his body to react this way, but he was at their mercy, and he couldn't push words out of his mouth. 

"Get him on his knees." One of the men said and Jamie was pushed to the ground, barely able to hold himself up, considering his second knee was missing.

He heard the sound of zippers and then pants being pulled down, and he was suddenly surrounded by them, their embarrassing words thrown at him, as they held his nose closed so he would open his mouth.

They all had their turn, Jamie choking and spluttering for breath whenever they swapped, pushing himself back from their torsos in a desperate attempt to get away. But there was nowhere to go. The first guy pushed his head down when he finished and he forced him to swallow everything up, pushing him away after. Jamie took the opportunity to turn away and throw up, his throat raw and painful to the point where he couldn't even scream. The others jacked themselves off until they came onto him, his body wet and cold on the ground, barely able to avoid his own vomit as he collapsed down. 

He didn't even realise they'd left. He just cried. He screamed as well, he screamed and shouted and cursed the feeling that they had put on his body. 

Frank didn't show up until the next day, to tell Jamie that they had a room ready for him. Jamie realised in that moment when he was being given clothes and being shown to his room that he never had a choice at all. 

**

They left him alone for the next two days. They let him shower, and eat and drink water, and Frank didn't visit him at all. He had women come in and bring him his food. His place that was given to him was a room in the main building, where Frank was, as far as he knew. 

 

He didn't want him to get too far.

Jamie, since two days ago, was caught in a constant state of wanting to die and not caring at all. It would have been way too easy to lift the butter knife and cut himself with it, but he couldn't. He couldn't lift his own fingers, his body was a numb house that no one lived in anymore, and he had no mind in himself to do anything but feed and water his body and then lie there and stare at the ceiling. The thought that they had gone easy on him for a first time with what they'd done was as scary as it was numbing, and he didn't even want to imagine what they'd do to him after, but he knew. 

Sex was something that everyone talked about. In the dark land that they lived in, after law was gone, it was hard to keep people from reducing to their basic instincts, from taking things and people that didn't belong to them. Jamie had never seen someone do something like what had happened to him, but he'd heard about it. About the way that some boys referred to girls, and what they'd like to do to them. But Jamie never had an interest in girls anyway so he didn't listen 100%. Why bother himself with other people's troubles as well when he had enough of his own.

He knew it happened. He just never thought it'd happen to him.

He never thought that he was different and that in the way that he didn't like girls, there would also be people just like the ones that did those terrible things to girls that also were attracted to boys. He'd never realised, that he could be found attractive. Attractive enough for someone to take his control from him. 

He never realised until he was right there. And he knew it wasn't the end of that. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. He was stuck here. Under Frank's control. And no matter how generous the man played it, Jamie knew he wasn't who and what he pretended to be. 

People didn't come to his room until two days later.


	9. Low // Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a toughie as well, watch yourselves, okay? I'm sorry, i like torturing Junkrat :(( 
> 
> please leave a comment if you are enjoying this! I really really appreciate it!

Frank tried to play it gracious about the break that Jamie had been given. 

Jamie could tell that he was trying to play him, that he felt like maybe Jamie was a victim, that he could break him and he would eventually fall for it, that he would be so weak and emotionally unstable that he would start to actually believe that the things Frank was doing for him were charity, choices made out of actual concern for Jamie's health and wellbeing. 

Jamie knew that that wasn't true. In this world, very few people actually cared. And the chances that he was going to meet more caring people after Magpie were dramatically low, in his opinion. He knew Frank was trying to play him.

But he was scared that it would eventually work.

Would he get like that? The fact that he was stuck there hadn't even settled with finality in his head, as he'd been there for four days, and he was already sort of succumbing to his fate. His room was being watched, an unspoken threat hung over his head, he didn't have access to anything and he knew no one who could help him. He was already starting to accept that, hope was fading from him. 

If this had happened so quickly, how long would it be before Frank had him wrapped around his finger, manipulated into doing anything that Frank wanted him to, even have sex with men he didn't know, do things to his body he didn't want to do, become a slave in all regards. All of those things were within the realm of possibility since Jamie had gotten stuck here. He did not know how long his mental state was going to stay strong for. 

Especially when he felt like he had nothing much left to live for. 

The room they had given him was small but had its own bathroom. The main room only had a bed in it, and a window, a really small one, really high up. There was a small chest for clothes and other belongings. The divide between that room and the bathroom was a curtain, mismatched from all other things in the room, up in the right side of it to hide the makeshift toilet and the bath, which was an old bathtub and a tub that the women who washed him would fill with water, put him in the tub and throw it over him. He didn't enjoy it.

He had a few thoughts as to why he was being held for this when women were readily available but later thought of a few reasons why boys were taken instead of girls. He realised after a day or two that everyone on this establishment offering their services lived here. That meant that they did not grab random people off the streets, do what they wanted and dumped them back out. They didn't just want the pleasure, they wanted the slaves, the power over someone, to know they had nowhere to go and that if you asked for them they would be there. Which meant that said people could not get pregnant. He didn't know much about what supplies they had, but he highly doubted anything like condoms or contraception of any kind existed. One thought he had was that they probably didn't want to risk someone getting pregnant and either having to kill them or having to have another noisy mouth to feed. It made sense by the choice anyway, that way. If they got boys like him, smaller, thinner, not as muscular, then it didn't really matter what was between someone's legs. Another thought he had was that maybe at this point people didn't care. For all he knew, they had plenty of girls as well and people just didn't care. They wanted someone to fuck and they didn't care who. He didn't know. He was only having these thoughts to busy himself, feel like he actually knew what was going on around him for once. 

After the two days went past, Frank came to his room. He was by himself, but that somehow did not make it any more comforting, although Jamie was sure Frank hoped it came off that way. 

"Hello, Jamie." Frank greeted him, but he stayed quiet.

"Now, it's a bit rude to not say hello back, wouldn't you say?" Frank said simply, and he tapped his cigarette to leave some of his ashes on the ground. 

Threatened by the potential meaning of 'punishment' behind those words, Jamie said a small hello back to him, but he didn't look him in the eyes. He kept his eyes tracked on Frank's cigarette, watching the ashes fall and the smoke rise as he held it to his side. 

"Now, I just came here to discuss some ground rules before you get officially initiated into here," Frank started, and he sat on the bed next to Jamie, who shifted away immediately. "Now, first off, you do not have a say in who comes in here and asks for you. You do as they tell you and nothing else. If someone seriously hurts you, you tell me and they won't be coming around anymore. That is the only exception, though. No matter what else someone wants from you, you comply, understood?" Frank's tone was the one he had used last time as well, calm and nonchalant, as if he was simply commenting on the weather. 

"Nod that you understand, Jamie." He commanded, and Jamie nodded his head, almost lost in the way the lit cigarette in Frank's hand was continuing to burn. He was focusing on that, instead of thinking about what Frank was saying, not paying complete attention. 

"Good. Now, to show who you belong to, we're going to have to brand you-" Jamie immediately looked panicked, and stirred quickly to look into Frank's eyes for the first time. Frank grabbed his wrist tightly, bringing him in closer. "Don't you worry, it's just a little brand. You'll barely feel anything." Jamie knew he was lying. His eyes filled up with tears on the spot, and he cursed himself for thinking about the pain. 

"And just one more thing." Frank grabbed him by the hair and dragged him closer, forcing a small cry to escape out of Jamie's lips and forcing him to look into Frank's eyes. "If you disappoint me. I'm going to cut your fucking dick off, Jamie." 

Jamie swallowed heavily as a tear ran down his face, unintentional but clear as day. He was shaking slightly, and whimpers were leaving his mouth softly, Frank noticing them. He smiled. His hand came up to wipe away the tear, and to Jamie's horror, he leaned in and kissed him right on the lips. "Smile, pretty boy. I've saved your life." 

And with that Frank got up, leaving Jamie to grab his head, hurting from the tugging, and touch his lips, disgusted from the invasion, which he was sure he would feel again. 

"We also need to give you a haircut. Can't have lice going around. The others will get you tonight and we'll get you branded. See you then." And with those brief words, Frank had left the room, devastation in his wake.

Jamie looked down at his hands and realised he was still shaking. He was young, this couldn't be happening to him. He was young. He heard someone's sobs, and slowly came to realise that they were his own, his face watery from the tears that he hadn't realised were there. He was done for. He was going to be a slave for the rest of his life. He was done for. 

A brand, he thought. He's claiming me, like cattle. Like sheep off to be shorn. Like a lamb for slaughter, better yet. The very spoken threat that he now had hanging over his head made him numb from the waist down, thinking of it made him sick. Branded. He was seriously going to be sick. A reminder of Frank's lips on his, acting like his saviour, was enough to make him run to the toilet and throw up anything he held inside him. 

They found him like that two hours later, when the sun went down, when they went to get him ready. He was keened over the toilet. He didn't want to move.

**

They brought him to what he thought was Frank's room, as it was the biggest room he had ever seen in his life. It was wide and had windows, with actual glass on them, a big bed, a bathroom that actually looked like a bathroom, and two women, dressed in barely anything, sitting with him by a large fire in a makeshift fireplace, lit and warming up the space, the cold desert night rushing in through the building cutting off. Jamie noticed something in the fire's embers.

Frank was by the fire with the women, and when he saw Jamie come in with the two women that prepared him he waved all the women away, and the two beside him were replaced by two bodyguards that Jamie hadn't noticed were in the room. They weren't the ones he had been acquainted to only a few days prior. He had never met these ones before. 

"You're here! Alright, let's get straight into it." Frank stood up from his chair and clapped his hands together, putting some sort of protective glove over his hand and grabbing for the thing that Jamie had noticed in the embers, checking it. It was the branding iron, sure enough. 

The two guards grabbed him by the arms before he could even think about losing the bone-rigid fright and making a run for it. 

"Now, chances are this will make you pass out, so I say we take on the hair first." Frank said as he put the brand back down in the fire, leaving his glove as well.

The guards sat him in the chair Frank was previously seated in and left him alone, knowing he would not run for it. Sure enough, Jamie knew it was stupid to do so, and he saw still, waiting, looking at the fire as his guts bottomed out. Fire. What was so interesting about it? He didn't know. But when he looked at it he felt far away. Like with Frank's cigarette. Only this time he didn't just want to look, he wanted to light one. Maybe on Frank, but just any lighting of a fire would suffice. His hands were shaking and fumbling. The things he would do with a lighter right then. 

"So, snip snip, bye bye goldie locks!" Frank said, almost excitedly, and put his hand on Jamie's scalp, grabbing scissors and starting to cut, as evenly along Jamie's skull as he could, so he would be left with a buzzcut. 

Jamie watched his hair fall on the ground, as a strand of it was blown by the cold wind straight into the fire. He wished he could fall in it too. 

"There! All done and dusted. No infections and lice here." Frank said, putting away the scissors and grabbing the glove again, motioning to the two guards to grab Jamie again and hold him down against the chair, which they immediately did.

Jamie started to panic like a caged animal, though it was nothing but a natural reaction. He knew he stood no chance. Frank had already grabbed the brand, and he was brandishing it before Jamie's face before Jamie could even count to ten to calm himself down. His forehead was sweating as he was held down against the chair, his shirt lifted and his pants and underwear dropped so he was in view. Frank cleaned the area of skin on his thigh, right next to his privates, so just under the hipbone. The feeling of his privates so close to an open flame and something very scalding hot was not comforting, and his body attempted to shift, but could not because of the hold the guards had on him. His brain went into full panic mode and he attempted once more to shift, continuing his harrowing efforts, even though no one payed him any mind. He wasn't getting out. 

Frank was talking but he couldn't concentrate on what was being said. He shut his eyes as the brand got closer, and then all of a sudden it felt like he was being cut in half. He threw his head back and screamed, blood curdling and horrid, like the pain that he was feeling right then. He was being split in half. They were tearing him apart. He was dying!

He didn't realise if the pain had stopped or had continued, but no matter what it was, his body gave in, and as he sweat in the chair his head fell loose and he passed out. 

When he woke up it was bandaged. He didn't want to look at it. He didn't want to know what it said. He didn't want to.


	10. Low // Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im sorry that this is so depressing, and it goes on for quite a while talking about feelings rather than events, but i didnt want to have that many graphic scenes (yet or maybe at all) and i wanted to focus more on how jamie feels
> 
> dont worry, because things will perk up pretty soon, i'm adding time skips soon

It was Frank's initials, he could only assume. 'F.W.' marked clearly under his left hipbone. It was inescapable. 

At first it was just the pain. Then after the pain faded away it was the knowledge. That it was there, he meant. Then after was the looks, the ones he gave it in the night when he was crying and he was trying to decide what he had done to deserve it. 

He hadn't had any visitors. Frank was letting the wound fix first, before someone went ahead and infected it or something. Jamie, at this point, was not even glad. It was just putting off what he knew was coming, eventually. And he knew Frank would try to use this as leverage, as he had with all other things that had been offered to Jamie since his arrival to this Godforsaken hell hole. His room, his baths, the food, the water, all things that he had been given felt sour and cold despite their luxury for all the times they already had been held over his head and used as leverage, to stir up an emotion of guilt and debt in him. He was not only physically under the threat of being shackled to this place. He was under emotional and mental lockdown. 

Nothing he owned belonged to him anymore. Not even himself. 

They took off the bandage maybe a week after, and the skin was safe to touch not too long after that. He wasn't sure what sort of magic healing cream they'd put on it, but it was healing immensely fast. He wasn't amazingly happy about it.

Frank showed up to his room once again, this time to let him know about what would be going down now that he was ready to go into 'business', as Frank himself put it. 

Jamie didn't want to hear his fucking name one more time. Every time that it slipped from Frank's lips he felt his soul slip more and more into the depths of hell where he wished he was, because surely that would be better than this, and he didn't want Frank to say it anymore. It took him a while, but he slowly realised why Frank had insisted on knowing his real name, and it all made sense. Frank's whole thing was taking away his control. Taking away all things that tied him to himself. He'd taken his body by branding it, his mind by the guilt that came along with luxury, his will by the way he'd been given off to those guards, but it had all started when he took away his name. The very first thing. He'd taken everything. Jamie wasn't sure that there was even anything left to give. 

But he was proven once again wrong, when Frank came to talk to him that day. 

"I think I've given you enough time," was the essence of what he said "…He'll be here soon, so you best be ready." 

Jamie wasn't ready. But he wasn't sure he ever would be.

The man that showed up expected him to fight and he knew it as soon as the man walked through the door. It almost felt like he wanted Jamie to fight him back, to push him away. Jamie almost wished he could stop his body's natural reaction of fighting and fleeing just so he could disappoint the man slightly. That wasn't what happened, though.

The man that came in was dirty, as expected, but he wasn't very old, maybe in his mid-thirties. His hair was dark, but much of it had fallen off and was withering, the crazy look in his eye familiar to Jamie as the radiation that danced all around them at any given moment. The man was missing a few teeth. Jamie noticed when he smiled at him, the predatory smile that launched Jamie into a personal attack, his body thrashing to get away even after the man had a grip on him, his hands bruising Jamie's wrists as he held him down. 

He didn't spend a lot of time with other things, things that were more personal, like touching him, kissing him, looking him in the eyes. Jamie was almost glad he didn't, and he prayed for small mercies. But the man also didn't spend very long prepping him, and Jamie knew very certainly that the man didn't care if he was hurting, and he had expected that, but he hadn't expected how much it was going to hurt. 

He had never done anything like this before, and the intrusion was immediately unwelcomed by his body, especially in the current environment. His hands were pinned down so he could not move, and his face was against the mattress, pushed down so his body could not thrash. He found that trying to move hurt him a lot more than sitting still, but he couldn't get himself to calm down.

"Sit yer fuckin' ass still, whore!" The man was shouting at him, but his words had no impact on Jamie, who continued to try and drag himself away from the man.

It was only when the man started pushing his hips that Jamie shouted, and then laid his head down against the mattress, and he just cried. 

His body shook from the crying he was doing, his eyes blurry from the tears. He had never felt this way before. Like absolutely nothing could pick him up from here, nothing could save him. Nothing could make it better. He wanted to die. His thoughts went to God, one he never believed in before, and he begged, he begged to die. He begged to be let out of his misery. No one answered him, and all he could do was continue to cry as he was violated, the man eventually finishing up and slapping his butt, leaving him behind on the bed and walking out while doing up his belt. 

Jamie sat there. He was nothing.

Frank came in and Jamie couldn't even get himself to shy away. When Frank shushed him gently and held him close, he couldn't pull himself away. The touch was so different from the one he had just experienced that he didn't care who it was, he didn't care who was holding him. He let himself be held as he cried. He let Frank pick up the pieces, like he wanted to. He knew it was far from over. 

**

In the next two days, he was visited by one more person, another man, with red hair this time, but the only thing Jamie held onto from that exchange was his smile, the same sinister and predatory smile they'd all had. 

From the second time, it was already getting easier. Not less painful, not less degrading and horrible and disgusting and pain-inducing. It was only getting easier to shut it out. To close his eyes, let himself go limp, and pretend he was somewhere else. The only place where he could still hold on to himself was inside his head, where he receded to hide from what was happening to him. 

His brain was barely dealing. He was surprised he had not gone crazy yet. Maybe he was crazy, for all he knew. He didn't feel like he knew much anymore.

But the point of knowing things, guy in guy out, became less clear to him. There was no point in holding on when there was nothing he felt he could hold on to. The only thing that offered gravity to his life anymore was Frank, and he hated it.

He hated Frank, sure, but most of all he hated the way that everything Frank had done to manipulate him was working. He could not stop himself from holding on to him, he could not stop himself from trying to believe he cared, and he couldn't stop himself from thinking of Frank as someone who was there for him, no matter how hard he tried. It was the only thing that was keeping his brain intact, it was the only thing that his mind could hold on to, and despite the danger of it, he did.

He knew that was what Frank wanted. It was his ultimate form of control over Jamie. He knew this, and yet he couldn't stop himself. Soon, it felt like the only one who was ever there for him was Frank, he was the only one that Jamie could talk to, get a few words in, get a touch from that felt like it was worth something. His mind craved it. But he himself did not want it. 

It was weird how the brain found escape in things like this in times when all hope was lost. Maybe if Magpie was around, Jamie would remember the difference between Frank and someone who actually cared about him, but Magpie was not here anymore, in fact, he was dead all because of Jamie, and that was the reason that Jamie didn't think about him as much anymore. 

In just two months of being there, with Frank, his brain had done a full turn and started trying to make him believe that this was all his fault. This was penance for getting Magpie killed. He was doomed to this life of being hurt and then letting Frank swoop in to pick up the pieces until the end of him, and he hoped foolishly that it would come soon. 

This was the only time in his life where Jamie, Junkrat, really wished that he would die. In all other times in his life he had never gone so far as to think that death would be better, he was always looking ahead. Something better would come, surely. Something would change things. Someone would change things. But he saw no out this time. There was no one out there to help him, people who cared without wanting something back seemed to be in short supply, no one cared about Australia, much less the outback, and no one cared about him, a slave among many, with no one out there, not even himself. He was the only one that could save himself now, but every day the possibility of that happening seemed further and further away until it was nothing but a speck in the distance, every time he thought he got close to it it would jump further away.

Maybe he didn't deserve death either. 

Frank made sure he couldn't get to it anyway. He was barely unsupervised, and everything that was given to him was later taken away. He was no possessions and no ability for an out. There was nothing to do but succumb and hope he lasted long enough to see himself happy. But that, just like the possibility of escape, seemed like the ramblings of a mad man. 

For months, all he knew was them. The men that came in and out, sometimes men he had seen before. They touched him, they had their way, they called him things he didn't even know he could be called, words he didn't know existed, and then they left him again. He was a shell of himself, and he was grasping onto barely anything anymore. His days were the same over and over, and his brain was not catching up. It became easier and easier to shrink back into himself and think about made up things and lives and futures, and who would he be if things were not this way? If Magpie was alive? If the desert hadn't been so long and unforgiving? If he hadn't looked the way he had, skinny and small, maybe it was his fault as well, his body for betraying his sexuality as it had. He knew who he was and who he was attracted to, and he was sure Frank knew as well, and maybe if he wasn't this way then they wouldn't have wanted him. 

Time went by before he could even realise. He was not present anymore, in his own life. The women that came to his room fed him sometimes, because he could not get up and care for himself. He was treated for whatever diseases the ones who weren't careful gave to him, but he wasn't sure how. He was being injected with things to keep him alive, things that made him sick and then paranoid and then finally happy, things that simulated what the men that came to see him wanted to see. Drugs he didn't know the name of. 

He didn't know how he was alive. He didn't know how Frank was keeping him alive. But he had been foolish once again to think that Frank wouldn't have found every single drug on this godforsaken land just to keep the last thing he owned from him. His death.


	11. Low // Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a filler chapter tbh, wanted some more time before shit starts goin down again 
> 
> huge warnings for suicidal thoughts and planning in this chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy!

He turned sixteen under enslavement. And then seventeen. 

Things had gotten better, he had to admit. Once Frank knew he wouldn't leave, once his morale had been broken, he was allowed a house, outside of Frank's, next to all the other residents' houses. It was a shithole, all small and dirty, with a mattress on the floor, a definite downgrade, but he was himself now. He had to take care of himself, and feed himself, and he got to walk around freely as long as he was at Frank's for his 'work'. He was paid in food, water and clothes. 

The false sense of stability and independence had made him better. Better than any drug could. 

He still got a few of those, only for when he got infected with something, but they'd cut everything else out. He did as he was told, by Frank or by clients, he pretended he enjoyed it even, while he shut himself out, he let them call him names and do things to him, and he went home and prayed for small victories, for how he was by himself now, and how he could keep himself up to feed himself. 

Life was not good, it was not. But Jamie was rebuilding himself. It felt like maybe there was still a flame that he could kindle, nurture, and maybe it would even grow into something. He knew he had to go along with it all. 

It was when he was sixteen that Magpie visited him. Well, not really, Magpie was dead. But he seemed very alive when Jamie was by himself in his room at night and they sat together and talked, and Magpie spoke to him about how heaven was and how great it would be when he joined him and they would be together again. Just him and Magpie against the world.

Jamie was aware that he was going crazy. He didn't want to stop.

He threw his bag to the ground of his room as he got 'home', and he smiled at the sight of Magpie by the kitchen, waiting for him.

"You know, every day you get closer to salvation." He'd start off by saying the same thing he always did. 

"I know." Jamie replied, and he smiled. He pulled out the piece of wood he was hiding behind his bed, getting ready to continue sharpening the end of it against a blunt rock, when Magpie spoke.

"You should have dinner first. You're hungry." Magpie chastised. 

"What's the point of eating. It will hold no value soon." Jamie said, as he looked over the wood. It would soon be a spike. Not the best way to go, but better than what he lived. 

Magpie's eyes reflected a certain sadness at those words that he knew came from himself. After all, Magpie was not really there. He was Jamie's mind, making up things so he didn't feel so lonely.

"You should eat anyway. You never know." Magpie said.

Magpie held the worst and best of Jamie in him. He had prompted Jamie to find a way to join him, to pick up the wood he found and to sharpen it, he prompted Jamie's brain to think about which place to stab it through would work the best, which part of his body was the best at bleeding. But he also held the stupid hope that Jamie did not know existed anymore. Maybe you should be eating, Magpie would say, just in case. You never know. You never know when things could turn your way. 

Jamie didn't want to believe anymore. It was easier that way. The way he'd managed to loosen Frank's hold on him enough to have a moment to euthanize himself was already a miracle and it was the only one that he had any space in himself to believe in. He'd started planning this almost as soon as he was into a house by himself. It took him a while to get all the stuff he needed and to space it out enough to be discrete about it so Frank wouldn't catch on, but he was on his way now, and he estimated that it wouldn't take longer than a month to do this. 

He had grown a lot in the past year and a half. As he'd hit that stage of switching between boy and man he had grown even taller, settling at a grand 6 foot 4, now being able to catch up with other men around him in height. He hadn't gained much bulk, as he didn't do as much heavy lifting or running, it not being as required now as it had in his previous lifestyle, but he'd still bulked up a bit, hormones he assumed, and now he managed to look a bit less like a toothpick. His hair was still kept tightly trimmed to touch his skull, as it had since the first weeks he was there, and he got a biweekly haircut from Mad Mary, who had taken up the role of haircutter in the slums of Battery City. Although the whole of Battery City could be considered a slum.

Battery City. What Frank's little establishment was called. Once he'd gotten out of the house and managed to get himself together enough to pick up some additional stuff about where he was he found out a few things. Frank had been some sort of drug lord, his own drug ring and all, while the war was going down, and after it was over he and his team hid out in the outback and ran some sort of undercover human trafficking business, to pass the time or whatever Frank does illegal shit for. It was only after the omnium that Frank managed to take advantage of the chaos and start his own community here. It must have been fairly easy. He had a bunch of men following his orders, no laws or police to stop him, scrap and destroyed buildings that belonged to dead people. He seized up a bunch of buildings and started calling it Battery City, and in the years going forward it grew. He stopped dabbling in drugs, as he no longer needed to. No one was out here buying drugs during the apocalypse, and they were fairly hard to source as well. He stuck to haggling for basic things, like water, food, shelter and basic human rights. No laws in a lawless wasteland. 

Not that Jamie gave two shits about how Frank was sitting on his self-made throne. He'd picked it up from things he had heard. That was all. 

Jamie didn't have a lot of human interaction, outside of his 'work', and the interaction that he did have was minimal and not socially satisfying in the least. It was mostly because people knew who he was and what he did. Being ranked so lowly in such a low grade society takes its toll on your social image. The other factor was that he worked a lot. He wasn't even sure why he called it a job when he referred to it in his head. Maybe because it's easier to say 'work hours' rather than 'slave hours'. But no matter, he had no say on when he had to come in. He got up with the sun and made his way to the main building, stayed there until just after sundown and then went home, exhausted enough to fall asleep immediately after scratching away at the lump of wood he called "suicide". He barely had time to feed himself, take a shower, think.

When he did think, he was pretty ashamed about the things he thought about. It wasn't like he'd ever had any sort of romantic attraction to Magpie at all, and he could say that with full seriousness, but having sexual contact with people, it being non-consensual, it was the only thing he knew, and he sometimes imagined what it would be like for him to do it like it was supposed to be done. With love or, whatever that was. And, well, it just happened that the only person he knew that had come close to maybe loving him, no matter in what way, was Magpie. He sometimes imagined what that would be like. It was easier to imagine it when he wasn't making up the other person. When he'd tried to do that it always turned into someone very familiar, someone he'd seen before, someone with a sinister smile that never listened to him and only wanted to hurt him. He stuck to thinking of Magpie. It wasn't like the imagery did anything for him, he didn't feel like engaging into anything like that half the time, but imagining what it must be like to be in love was so overwhelmingly soothing to him that he thought about it all the time. 

Sex was a huge part of his life. Or, more like rape. He didn't know how desensitised he'd become to it and he supposed there was no way of knowing now.

The spike was going, it was almost going enough that he could pull of his grand escape from this reality. It was then that the Magpie that spoke to him when he got home started having second thoughts. 

"Are you sure that's the way to go? Maybe you should look around for a way to escape instead.."

"And go where? To die in the desert? No thanks." Junkrat would reply, but Magpie, himself, always had another question.

"Are you sure though? You could for sure figure something else out. And wouldn't you want to walk away and imagine Frank's rotten face when he finds out?"

Jamie had to agree he did want to imagine that. How good would it feel to know that he'd stuck it to the man and walked away from Frank? While he was thinking about it, he remained silent, and he guessed that Magpie (or Jamie's conscience disguised as Magpie), took that as a sign to keep talking and filling him with false hope.

"You could work it out. There must be some sort of flaw in this system that you can exploit. You have the resources all around you-"

"It's not going to happen.." But he sounded weak even to himself.

"It could. It very well could. Think about what Mad Mary was gossiping about today when she was cutting your hair." Magpie pointed out.

"Her boyfriend, Rickie Roy who falls asleep on watch during the night." Jamie said, thinking over that piece of information.

"Exactly. You could time it well enough. Go out while he's asleep, grab a car and roll the hell out of here. It would take them too long to follow you since Rickie would be asleep." Magpie said, and Jamie became aware of the fact that he was arguing with himself.

"They'd follow me and find me eventually." Jamie tried to put up a fight.

"Not if you hold them off for long enough. Stop them frim finding you for a month tops and they'll give up. No matter how much Frank wants you, he won't continue to put his supplies and man power into looking for you. If you get far enough and establish yourself in another community he'll never find you."

Jamie simply turned away, and when he looked back Magpie had disappeared. He frowned slightly and scrunched his eyebrows together, looking troubled. The wood in his hand made him feel numb. It was so close to being a spike. And it would be so easy. He could take the easy way out, right then.

He left the spike for now and went to sleep. He wasn't sure anymore, but growing hope was of no use here. Not anymore. He'd do best to buckle up and take the easy way out while he could, he'd do better to grow up and stop believing in miracles where he could actually save himself from this. 

He went to sleep and continued his routine for over a month before he witnessed Rickie as he went home at night, sitting by the main gate near the car space, head tilted back with his mouth open, snoring. He somehow didn't really feel like scratching at the spike anymore. 

He fucking hated hoping so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just finished playing borderlands and I wrote this while waiting for the second one to install because I love borderlands so much all of a sudden and i wanna grind through all the games real quick ANYWAy this was unrelated to the chapter
> 
> leave a comment if you enjoyed and dont forget to SMASH that subscribe button just kidding 
> 
> thank you!


	12. Low // Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter of "low"! We're getting into something new now! I am really excited for the rest of this fic that is yet to come! Also, roadhog becomes a big part of this soon >:^)

It took him another week or two before he finally got over himself and his stubbornness enough to admit that he was going to try. To break out, that is. 

The ideas were already spinning in his head. A car would be easy to get, it would be conserving food and water unnoticed that would be hard. 

His food usually consisted of packaged stuff, so he could save the packaged part of the meal each time and then also bottle half his water every day. He would go hungrier and thirstier, but hopefully it would last him until he made his way to another place and found his way in the desert. The other factor he had to consider was petrol for the car. He was sure they were kept full, but he'd have to consider that he could be in the desert for a very long time, and he'd have to bring some more petrol with him, which would be more challenging to find. He assumed it was kept in the same shed where all the other supplies were kept, however, and the only way to get that would be to break in. Since he was going to do that, he may as well grab some medicine, just in case. 

That would have to be the last thing he grabbed, knowing that the supplies were all counted daily and rationed. It wouldn't take too long for them to notice petrol and medicine was missing and they'd go on a hunt, probably have everyone on lock down. It had to be the last thing that he picked up before he ditched that joint. 

He continued to sharpen the spike. He didn't want to consider the possibility of encountering someone on his way out, but he had to. He had to be prepared for any possibility. And the only way he could make it out if he was caught in the act would be having something to defend himself with. Otherwise, well, he could say goodbye to his dick. He took the threat quite literally, and he was almost too sure that he wouldn't have any more chances, should this one fail. He couldn't wait to get as far away as humanly possible from here. 

Maybe even leave Australia, who knew. There was nothing for him here anymore anyway. 

He had never considered what picking up the pieces might be like. The thought of the great beyond and the endless choices that awaited him after he left was almost daunting. It was almost as if he didn't remember what owning himself and not being forced to fuck a bunch of guys he didn't know felt like. That was very sad when he thought about it. He tended not to think about it too much for the reason that it made him very angry, inhumanely so. The thought of the cigarette burning away in Frank's hand, the fire the brand had been heated in. The thoughts of fire were strangely comforting to him despite the memories that they carried. He had found his solace in imagining what this place would look like if he burnt it to the ground. He liked fire. He liked imagining the place exploding and going up in flames. He wasn't sure where this tendency had sprouted from, but perhaps it was something that he held inside himself as rebellion against the things that hurt him. Frank's cigarette popped into mind again. The fact that he held fire in him the way he did made it seem like Frank didn't have that much control over him after all, because he'd tried to scare him with fire multiple times. The image was always there. And yet Jamie wasn't scared of it. In fact, its presence almost made him feel like there was something he could hold on to in that situation. It was weird, it was a peculiar feeling, and one he wouldn't yet explore. Maybe after he left this place. 

His next haircut was the perfect opportunity for him to find out more information about Mad Mary's boyfriend. He did so many things during the day, apparently, trying to keep them afloat, that during his night shift as a guard he lost control of his body and fell into such deep sleep that nothing could wake him. The only reason he hadn't been taken off the night shift was because no one really knew. Nothing had happened to warrant people finding out. Jamie found this peculiar, seeing as Mary liked to talk. A lot. He was surprised to find out that Mary only really talked to him. Maybe she found him trustworthy, who knew. He did seem like he wasn't in the position to share, and Mary must have known that Jamie didn't see Frank in any sort of positive light, that much was evident by his situation. He almost felt bad, knowing he was going to get Mary and her boyfriend into trouble, maybe even killed. But he had to push the thoughts away. There was no space for trust anymore. He knew that if the situation was the other way around, Mary and any other person in this place would sell him out in a heartbeat. He had to think about himself now. 

He had to think about himself, and he had to stop trusting. He was not going to start his new life weak and vulnerable. He was older now. He knew he had to fend for himself. He had to stay safe. And that meant no trust. He was going to implement this rule as soon as he left this place. 

The escape happened two months after he started planning it. He'd conserved enough food to last maybe a week, enough water to last for less than that, but hopefully enough. It was night when he started making his escape.

He put the shit he needed in his bag, throwing it onto his shoulders, and snuck out into the night quietly. Thankfully there were no street patrols, but there was also no night curfew so he would have to make sure he didn't run into any citizens that made their way out at night.   
He knew the only guard that he would possibly encounter was the one guarding the storeroom, but it was okay. He'd nicked some keys off a guard before, he could do it again. Granted, last time he did that he ended up accidentally getting his best friend killed, but he could say he was good at learning from his mistakes. Probably. Well, he would be able to say that if this worked out. 

He snuck his way to the storeroom, and sure enough the guard was right outside, and this time he wasn't asleep. But the keys were not on his person, instead sitting in his hand, which was placed on the bench next to where he was sitting. Okay, he was kind of betting on this guy being asleep as well, but he could do this regardless. He was smart, he'd find his way. He just had to distract him. He looked to the ground, immediately grabbing for a rock, as he'd hoped there would be one. He looked to the left of the guard, where he saw a pipe, running down the side of a nearby house. He aimed, and chucked the rock so it arched perfectly and hit the pipe, making a satisfying 'ting' against the metal. The guard immediately turned his head, looking suspicious. He got up slowly and walked to the pipe. Junkrat noticed that he'd also taken the keys with him, and he sighed as quietly and angrily as he could. Guess he'd have to be more hands on. He sure hoped he could still run, stump leg and all. He noticed a knife, strapped to the man's thigh. His eyes glinted. As the man was looking, Jamie crept up behind him and put his hand over the man's mouth, holding him tightly so his cries weren't heard. He grabbed the knife and swiftly ran it across the man's neck, holding his mouth closed still and waiting until he passed out so he could leave him on the ground. He grabbed the keys immediately after. He didn't have time to think about the fact that he had just killed a man. In fact, he meant not to think about it. 

He'd thought previously that he may need to do something like this in order to escape, but the possibility had seemed all too far away from him. Now it was there, now it was done. He wasn't sure if later, when he was gone from this place, he would start to feel guilty about it. He still kept the knife on him.

Key in hand, he unlocked the door and went inside, looking around frantically for the things he needed. The watch didn't swap until two hours later, but he still needed to be as quick as possible. He didn't know how long it would take for the dead man to be noticed. He grabbed the medicine. He grabbed the petrol as well, two tanks, he couldn't carry any more anyway. With the bag on his shoulder and the petrol in his hands he walked out of there, closing the door as to not arise more suspicion before its time. 

He walked speedily to the gate, praying he would not run into anyone, and sure enough, there was Mad Mary's boyfriend, out like a light, sleeping with his mouth open and drool down his chin. Jamie scrunched up his face and moved past him, looking only to the gate.The second he stepped out of there he could hardly believe it. He struggled to conjure a memory of the last time he had seen the open desert like this. It made him want to scream from happiness. Suppressing the smile that wanted to come onto his face, he walked to the "Car park" of sorts that was set up right next to the gate. He knew no one would intercept him, as the cars were supposed to be watched by the same person that was watching the gate. He knew the gate watcher was supposed to keep an extra close eye on the cars, because they had not found a way to secure them. The keys were kept inside the cars and they were never locked for that reason, and Jamie questioned that choice but he thought it probably had something to do with the fact that no one came near this place and dared challenge Frank anyway. He was sure the only reason the supplies were locked was because Frank didn't want the residents getting in there and taking whatever they wanted. No matter the thinking, Jamie was glad. 

He went over to the first car he saw, a wide one with large wheels. It had the words Hummer H1 written on the side in paint, and he assumed all the vehicles had their type written on them as per Frank's request. He put his things in the back, his arms shaking as he got in the front himself and put the keys from the cup holder into the engine. He didn't actually know how to drive, but it couldn't be that hard, could it? He had this down, surely. 

He revved up the engine and then he switched the gear, putting his foot on the pedal he assumed was the 'go' pedal. Sure enough, the car went, and he was out into the night like a bullet flying from a gun. He didn't have time to think, he barely had time to breathe, and it was only fifteen minutes later that he looked back and realised he couldn't see it anymore. That horrid place. He was out.

His hands, still covered in blood, were on the wheel, and he looked to the front again. He took a few more breaths, the realisation of his escape finally setting in. His eyes welled up with tears and he began to cry. A huge smile was on his face. He'd done it.

He was free. He didn't belong to anyone else anymore.

He was free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave a comment if you enjoyed it! I love reading comments i check ao3 for them at least thrice a day PLEASE


	13. Found // One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Oc Junkertown (tm) 
> 
> Enjoy!!

He was driving for two days before he encountered any other civilisation.

Fears about being followed were slowly drifting away. It would have taken them too long to get started on finding him, and even then the desert wind would have blown away at the tracks his car left and they'd be left with no leads as to where he was. 

He was sure Frank would give up. He didn't matter that much to him in the whole scheme of things. He knew that. He reminded himself of that a lot.

He parked the car outside, looking up. 'Junkertown' was written in large letters across the front. This place had an actual gate that opened and closed, and he looked up at it with growing expectation. Anything was better than Battery City. Anything was better than that. He had a fresh start now. He could do it.

"Hello?" He called out to the metal, the sound of the wind breezing by as a response. 

"Who the hell are you?" Came a call from the side of the large door, where Jamie noticed that a smaller door had opened and a woman was looking at him with squinted eyes. 

New start. New start, he said to himself again. "I'm Junkrat. Think I can speak to the person in charge here?" He asked, trying to come off as least threatening as possible. He knew he wasn't much to look at, but bad deeds and intetions made themselves clear as day on anyone's face. He didn't want the woman to think he had come here to rob them, or kill them.

She looked at him a second longer before she nodded, telling him to wait a tick, and then disappeared inside. Jamie was waiting for three minutes tops before the woman came back, this time with another woman behind her. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a harsh look on her face. Her long blonde hair was styled into a Mohawk. She had black lines across her face, she looked like she had been working on something. 

"G'day." He greeted her, raising his hand to wave, a small smile on his face. She didn't reciprocate any of it. He understood that she was trying to be protective to this Junkertown place. He had to prove himself before he would be let in. 

"Whaddaya want?" She grumbled at him.

"I was only wondering if it was possible for me to pick up some work in Junkertown." He said simply, and she huffed.

"Where did you come from?" She asked, and his eyes fell to the ground. He couldn't lie to her. She'd see through it. He was never too good at lying. Except to himself, of course.

"Battery City." He said quietly, and he could have sworn that the look on her face softened a little, as if she automatically knew everything about him, everything that he was talking about, everything that made him tilt his eyes to the ground.

"We have some jobs to be done. But we don't take slackers. Are ya willing to work ya bloody behind off?" She asked, the harsh tone still evident in her voice even if it didn't match her face anymore that much.

Jamie lit up. "I'll do whatever." He thought of the last time he said this phrase and how he ended up. He hoped this wouldn't be another Battery City. 

The woman looked him up and down again a few more times before she nodded, and outstretched her hand for him to shake. He did, and she smirked at him.

"You're on thin fuckin ice though, mate. You can call me 'The Queen', as I am. Welcome to Junkertown."

**

He was appointed the role of 'Junker', which he took happily, considering how low his expectations were already. From what he gathered, the Junkers were a group that left Jukertown together (every day except on weekends? Having time off for the first time in his life? Weird). They were supposed to search for scrap from nearby, where the omnium used to be. He hadn't noticed that it was there until he was told that he would be digging around near the omnium, and the second he laid eyes on the waste that was the Australian Omnium he was chilled to the bone. It pulled up memories he didn't want to think about.

Like his dreams of his mother screaming. 

They hadn't happened in a while. He thinks it's mostly because his past gets foggier and foggier with each passing day. It's mostly because different dreams have taken up his head. There are things more clear and remembered in his head than his mother, more recent and fresh in his mind, and it becomes progressively easier for his brain to conjure up Frank's face and night terrors about being in his clutches again. It scares him. Not only does the imagery scare the shit out of him, but the thought of losing the only memory that held his family in it, no matter in what position, was terrifying to him. 

He didn't want to lose them. But no matter how closely he tried to hold on to his own thoughts, he was not under control of his own brain. As time went by, thoughts slipped away, and now that he was going to be working so close to a radioactive zone he doubted it would get better. His brain, riddled with radioactivity, could only hold on to short term things with absolute clarity. There was still an inkling there of his mother's voice, but he could not be sure if it was her voice he was really hearing, or if he had been influenced by the voice of other women. The only comfort he took in his own deteriorating memory was that one day Frank would be no more than a foggy memory in the back of his mind, blurry images haunting him in his sleep. He supposed that that was one thing his memory was good for. He could keep all the things he didn't want to remember buried underneath the layers of consciousness, and he'd only let them come out at night while he was asleep. The memory of losing his leg was also a prime example here, and a pain he tried to escape from in his daily life. The mere thought of the memory made the remainder of his leg numb.

It was only after he left Battery City that the pain set in. He assumed that it had been happening for a while now, but since his body was in pain almost 24/7 from the things that were done to him at Frank's, he was basically numb to it. Well, the pain had gone away and now his brain was getting accustomed once more to a lifestyle where he wasn't hurt every single second of his life. That meant that he became more sensitive to the pain from his missing limb, and he started to suffer from it. It was almost unreal, how he could feel the leg that wasn't there sometimes, and it hurt and called out to him as if it wanted him back. 

He didn't complain about the pain or do much about it. He used some painkillers from the medicine that he had taken with him from Battery City, but quickly decided that if he continued to take it he would get hooked to it way too easily, and who could tell where he'd find more painkillers like that. They were hard to get a hold of. Last thing he wanted to happen was to end up desperate enough to do whatever someone asked for the painkillers.

He took up work after two days in Junkertown. He was shown to a place of his own, although it wasn't his own, he had to share with two other men. They seemed chilled enough that Jamie felt that if he kept his words to himself he'd be fine. Especially considering that he worked at different times with the men. They were both guards overnight, which meant that while he would be off working as a junker they would be asleep, and by the time Jamie would be back, having handed in his day's work, they'd be getting ready to leave. That left them with a spare three seconds to talk, which meant that Jamie had already basically decided he would never get to know the guys. They were called Wack and Zero, that was all he knew about them basically. They were both older than him by about ten years, and knowing his previous experiences with older men he steered clear of them anyway. 

The time that was given to him before work was used to show him where the supplier was for all his gear and where he would be depositing his scrap (the Office, it was called, but it was more like a dirty shed with an old dude that would look at your metal and hand you a few Junkerbucks [junkertown's made up currency, little chips of some sort of metal] accordingly to what you brought in). He was also shown the shops, where he could buy food and supplies in general. He wondered how Junkertown managed to run its own economy like that. He assumed there were a lot more people living here than he knew, and he was soon proven correct as he was told that there was a really long expanse of land considered 'Junkertown' and there were about five thousand people living there. Jamie slowly came to realise the size of the place in the second day, when he saw how crowded all the basic necessities were. He spent some time with the old dude in the Office being shown what sort of scrap was usable and should be brought back. 

From what he understood, Junkers brought the metal, so everything could be built, including money and gear, so they were the largest group. There was also the Hunters, who were the ones who supplied all the supplies that couldn't be made from metal, like food, water and medicine. Jamie assumed they hunted in the desert and stole from others. They were an equally large group and they were all of similar build, much shorter than Jamie, much quieter as well, and very thin. They had to be, he was told, so they could sneak in to everywhere. Then there were other roles, miscellaneous things that had to be done, like guarding and cleaning and running shops. Somehow, things worked. Even though they had their own currency, they still traded with metals from other settlements, and the bucks only worked among them as a way to pay off ordinary people doing their jobs. Somehow, it really worked. Jamie started admiring the system. It felt like these people, led by the Queen, were really looking for something civilised, and Jamie knew that Junkertown was the closest thing he had seen to things being like they were before.

He didn't get to talk to other junkers much. He started going out with them on the daily, his hands digging through warm sand all day, grabbing pieces of metal and putting them in his bag, the one he had been given. He was also given a shirt and a hat, and he was supplied with a pair of simple shoes so his foot didn't burn up everyday walking on the burning sands. That was all that he was given, and all he had to make due with. He learned the best places to look, the places to stay away from. He was told to never go into the actual Omnium, or what was left of it. They were only allowed around it, but never in. Too dangerous. They could alert someone to their presence, they could get trapped in, have the roof fall in on them, get sick of radiation poisoning. It was a no-no, and Junkrat was chill staying away from it. He got used to the life pretty quick, used to understanding that nothing he found was his own, that he was supposed to pull his weight and bring shit in immediately. If he didn't find anything seven days in a row, he would be kicked out of Junkertown, such was the rule. There was also a rule against keeping things you found to yourself. That was all he was told, well aside from the "don't kill or hurt others" and the such. 

Life was good. Not everything, but he got by. He wasn't sure what he was working towards at times, but he was doing something in the least, he was surviving, and better than he had at Battery City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for your comments! It makes me smile so much to see someone has commented


	14. Found // Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Non canon Omnium treasure anyone? :))

A few months later, they were attacked overnight. 

Nothing really happened, they stole some supplies and left. Zero died during his shift. Some others did too. They were on thin ice and people would have to go hungry for a little while. Hunters were working more than ever and there was a sudden need for more overnight watchers. All the buff men, women and others of Junkertown were putting their names in and they suddenly had a much bigger protection force. None of this affected Junkrat per say, but the thought that someone could march in here before this had made him uneasy. He was still scared of Frank.

Wack killed himself a little while after Zero died. Jamie found him one day after his shift and had to call shakily for the Diggers to take the body away. Junkrat thought he did it because Zero died. He didn't know though. He didn't know either of them. 

He was by himself in his small room now, and he was surprisingly lonely for someone who didn't have interactions with his previous roommates anyway. He got into the habit of helping the Old Man at the Office when he had free time, not wanting to spend time alone with his thoughts. He only waited in his room to sleep. Nothing else was done there. He found he liked helping the Old Man and the Old Man didn't mind the weekend help. Jamie got back into making things, back into designing and thinking up things he could make in his head. Of course, he was only allowed to make what they needed. Weapons, that he was good at. Other things too, more common usage. He'd forgotten how good he was at this. Old Man informs him he won't get paid extra for doing this. He knows. He doesn't care. It's good enough, if he finally feels like he's enjoying himself and doing something worthwhile that actually makes him feel alive for a little while. He enjoys it. The angles, the maths, the curving of the metal, drawing out the design, thinking it through in his head. Making designs come to life. They always needed newer, better guns, and he was happy to provide his inner thinkings. 

Jamie turned eighteen. 

His life got particularly interesting when he found something in the sand while looking for scrap, something made of paper and stained with ink and the passage of time, grains of sand running through his fingers as he picked it up. A book. He didn't know what it said, but it was a book. He brought it with him anyway. 

Old Man said it was worthless and he could keep it. Jamie wasn't sure he had ever been happier. 

He couldn't read it, obviously. He didn't know how to discern more than a few basic words. But he knew it was about maths, something about maths. There were graphs and images in it. He spent his supposedly sleeping time staring dumbly at the pages and smiling, wishing nothing more than to be able to read the words set down in front of him. He continued to just look at it. 

He hadn't made friends and he didn't plan on it. He knew what had happened last time he had made friends. 

A new group of people showed up in Junkertown six months after Jamie assumed he had turned eighteen. He had been in Junkertown for a year now. The new group seemed to find settlement elsewhere, because he was not given a new roomie. A lot of them became guards, and Jamie paid them no mind. 

The mutilation on his hip was harder to ignore than his leg, surprisingly. It was always there, even when he couldn't see it, he could feel it as if it was burning a hole through his pants. A constant reminder that he didn't belond to himself, technically. Frank was still out there and he still belonged to him. It was the main reason that he cried at night, sometimes. He tried not to, because he knew that if someone heard he would never hear the end of it. No weaklings in Junkertown.

He asked Old Man if it'd be possible for him to make a new leg for himself. He was told he had to speak to the Queen, and she would judge if the thing he needed the metal for was worth it, and if he could use it to make a leg. Jamie imagined that he would make a leg that looked like a leg. It'd be hard but he was almost too sure he could do it. His old one was falling apart, basically. It was getting harder and harder for him to hobble in the desert. Even if he could make it out of anything other than wood, it would be better. He talked to the Queen and she granted him some metal, but he found out that it wasn't enough for a full leg. He didn't complain, in fear of being kicked out. He made his leg, another peg, but sturdier this time. Better made, since he didn't make it in honestly a few seconds, it worked much better for him.

Hauling around hunks of metal had also made him much stronger. He was starting to grow more muscle now, and even though he was still so thin and frail looking, he had some lines on his body indicating toughness. On his stomach and his skinny arms, mostly. His bad had begun to hunch from lugging around the metal, but he always made sure to stretch out his back after he brought in his day's work. 

He hadn't taken to showering much. The line for showers was huge, first of all, and you were granted an extremely small amount of water to shower with. He did it a few times for his own gratification, but found that even after he showered thoroughly, he still somehow felt dirty. His past hung over his head, and he still felt dirty and disgusted with himself. It became easier to just not wash himself. There was no point anymore. It only made the feeling of dirtiness inside him much more evident. 

He continued with his work. On he went. He continued with his life and staring at the book and making things and not thinking about his stupid past or how lonely he was. He continued until.

Until it was the sixth day where he went out for work and didn't finding anything. Not a damn thing. He wasn't looking in the right areas, he knew it. He knew it. But he was starting to panic. He couldn't leave. He couldn't make it out there on his own. 

Old Man put another notch next to his name after the sixth day, and his eyes almost betrayed some sort of sadness as he said "Better pull ya shit together, mate." Junkrat didn't know how he would actually do that. He could hear the other Junkers whispering about him. How he was a goner. He ignored them, mostly to settle the fear in his heart. He was so scared. He was shaking in his boot, basically.

Jamie was desperate. He was desperate, it is important that you remember that. 

He set out earlier the next day to get a head start. But mostly because he didn't want anyone to see him head into the omnium. 

The omium. It couldn't still be described as a building. The explosion had rendered it a corpse of its former self, and there were only few bits that could be described as rooms anymore, with half the ceiling left, doors blown open, metal streaming around them. He knew he wasn't allowed near here. He found a lot of metal though. He didn't pick it all up, afraid of looking suspicious. 

He was satisfied with himself and the stuff he'd packed away in his bag, a smile on his face as relief settled in his heart. He'd live to see another week yet in Junkertown. His record would be deleted and even if he couldn't find some again tomorrow, he didn't need to be as worried. 

The room he'd walked in smelled like dead things and there was blood on the walls and floor. The floor used to be tile, he could tell. Some of it was still left. There was nothing else left in the room, but he imagined what it used to be like. Machines in the room, papers, files. He didn't know, but he imagined. Being in the Omnium had dug up in his head once more to memories of what the world used to be like when the machines were still around. He was terrified of them, honestly. The thought of being in a place so closely related to them, to the omnics, was the scariest thing on earth to him. He couldn't help but imagine the things that this building used to hold. 

He was looking at the ceiling, taking a few steps back so he could head out before everyone else arrived. His eyes slinked back and he caught sight of something, glinting under some rubble. His eyes squinted at it and he tilted his head in curiosity. He slowly came closer, leaning down as he went so he could sweep the rubble to the side with his hands and take the glinting thing from among them. 

His eyes widened. 

He stood up straight immediately, looking around, and he shoved it in his pocket. Hooley dooley. He couldn't let anyone know about this, holy fuck. The thing he had in his pocket currently was worth more than the entirety of Junkertown and he knew it, he had heard about this. He couldn't hand it over to the Queen, he couldn't. 

He had found it, it was his. It was all his, the treasure in his pocket. Goddamn, once he got off this godforsaken country, he could make a life with the stuff this thing could get him. Fuck. 

He left the building, and had to try his hardest not to show his excitement. He retured that day and handed in his things to Old Man, who marked him as fine and wiped away his previous record, shooting him a small grin. Jamie grinned back. He wished he could tell the man, about what he'd found. He wished he could. But he didn't.

He went back to his home, and hid it. He sat on his bed staring blankly at the book and thinking about it. He had really done it. He could turn his life around with this. He had done it. 

He went to sleep that night and no nightmares haunted him. He would have to celebrate this tomorrow. After all, he had never been to the Junkertown bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good to know i have a monopoly on the 'gay junkrat' tag
> 
> thanks for reading and commenting!! <3


	15. Found // Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is shorter than normal, but guess who's back!!!!! :)) oink oink

The celebration did happen the next day, but he didn't remember it that much, unfortunately.

He remembered waking up, bright and peppy, going to work, and then afterwards going straight to the bar and slamming his palms down on the counter, asking for the strongest drink that they had for him. He was given one, no one sparing a glance, and he'd slammed it down. After two of them, whatever they were, he lost track of what was happening and only remembered waking up the day after, thankfully a Saturday, super late and with a pounding headache. He had figured out overnight that he was a complete lightweight and it hadn't taken that much for him to be black out drunk. Also, judging from the bucket of vomit that he had to throw out and clean, he had thrown up his bloody guts and didn't hold anything in his stomach anymore. He wasn't sure if he could say he'd had fun. He didn't remember enough of it. 

He remembered, at first, in the short tipsy stage that he had, that he wanted to cry a lot and scream about how fates had fucked him over and his life was supposed to be better than this and his dead parents and how he didn't even remember his father and blah blah blah. He deduced from this that he was a very emotional drunk, and if he wasn't happy about the treasure he'd found, he was sure he would have done just that. But he didn't remember doing a lot of crying, he only remembered doing a lot of talking. He didn't even remember what he had been talking about, only that he had been talking, to anyone and everyone around him. He shrugged, got up, painfully, and got himself dressed. 

He had shed most of his clothes, probably having overheated from being drunk last night. Well, for a first time being drunk, he probably fared fairly well. He put his shorts on and then slapped on a shirt. His drunk idiot self had forgotten to take off his leg last night and now his stump was vibrating with his breathing from pain and it had gotten chaffed and tired overnight. It hurt even more to walk now, but he made due. He was going to have to hunch over even more, is all. 

He ate a quick, small breakfast and had a sip of water and he made his way over to the Office. However, something strange was happening, something that he hadn't noticed happening ever before. He was drawing a lot of attention. 

As he walked past the numerous peoples of Junkertown, many of them looked at him, their beady eyes squinting at him curiously, some smirking at him and some looking angry, even. But all of those stares were directed specifically at him. He even walked past a large group who were talking loudly, and hushed when they noticed that he was walking past, watching him intently. 

He swallowed audibly and nervously. Something was going on. 

He entered the Office, the Old Man being the only one he had encountered so far to not stare at him. He decided he would lose nothing by asking. 

"Old Man? Why the bloody fuck is everyone staring at me?" He said, looking on at him.

"Can hardly blame the cunts," The Old Man started, lifting his bushy eyebrows "Last night when you got drunk you started blabbing on about the omnium and some shit. I wasn't even there." Jamie's eyes widened and his breathing fell short.

Fucking trust himself to mess this up so bad. He had to know what was said.

"Hooley dooley…" He mumbled, walking up to the Old Man and leaning down with wide eyes to ask him again, "What else did I say?"

"I don't bloody well know, mate. You're better off asking the goddamn bartender. He was actually there." The Old Man shrugged it off, and Jamie wasted no time ditching that place and walking as quickly as he could with his stump leg to the bar again, rushing to the bar tender again. He remembered him, he was the same man that was there last night, thankfully.

"G'day, mate." He greeted. The bartender gave him a dirty smirk.

"Hello Rat, how's that treasure goin'" Okay. Okay, not a good sign.

"So um, y'mind telling me what exactly happened last night?" He asked sheepishly.

"Those drinks really got to ya, huh?" The Bartender still had the teasing tone on. "Well, you only talked about a treasure you found is all. And how it's priceless and the Queen will never get it off you."

"Fuck." Jamie couldn't help but mutter to himself. "Fuck!" He said again, this time a bit louder.

Right on time, the doors opened and three large men came through, looking immediately to him, and then taking on a really sinister smile, as if they had been expecting him to be there. Not to Jamie's surprise, they walked to him immediately and cornered him against the bar, a feeling that made his breathing speed up. He was suddenly very scared. He was cornered by three men. He knew how this went back in Battery City. He didn't want it to go this way again. His chest was rising and falling rapidly before they even made it to him to talk. 

"Junkrat. Fancy seein you here." One of them said. He did his best to smile cheekily. 

"G'day cobber." He said, and the men pushed closer. 

"So," Another one talked "We just had some questions to ask about that treasure of yours." 

Jamie gulped and looked around the room for some sort of escape in this situation, someone he could get help from, someone he could pin this on to. Someone. His eyes caught someone, a large, hulking figure, bigger than all the men in front of him, sitting in the corner with a single drink in front of him, and a mask on his face. He wasn't looking this way. Junkrat saw a memory flash before his eyes. He knew that man. He knew him. 

Where did he know him from? Why was that image so familiar to him, where did he know the man from? He searched back in his head as the men continued to speak to him, he didn't listen. 

"-And if you don't tell us, well," They seemed to notice he wasn't listening "Are you even fucking listening to us, Rat? You're in big fucking trouble." 

Rat continued to not answer them, he had to remember. It was detrimental to his life that he do. 

And then the memory came back, all at once, like a tidal wave. The dingo. The dingo killer. The man that had stared him down when he was only a kid, and let him live. That was him. He was sure of it, Jamie was sure of it. That was him. He had to do something to get him to help. And he knew it wouldn't come easy. So he swallowed his selfishness, and he opened his mouth.

"Yeah, I do see that I'm in a bit of a jumble at the moment. You could definitely say that I need some help right now. I could definitely use that." He said, and looked straight to the man. If only he remembered his name. 

He still wasn't looking to Jamie. He was ignoring him completely. In fact, he was the only one who was. Everyone else was very interested in what was happening. But none interested in the deal. Jamie realised he would have to sweeten the deal to get the man's attention. 

"If SOMEONE were to help me right now, I would leave Junkertown with them and give them 5% of what I get for the treasure."

The man still wasn't paying attention.

"10%."

No moves. He feigned disinterested. What bloody high standards did the man have? Jamie sighed.

"20%!" He said, exasperated. 

There was a grunt from the man, and although to everyone else it wasn't telling, Jamie could somehow tell it was a mocking one. A mocking sort of grunt. He found 20% ridiculous for what was being asked of him. Oh come on, Jamie wasn't that hard to put up with, right?

"Fine! 50% of the spoils!" Jamie said finally, realising the men in front of him were getting tired of seeing him haggle and were catching up with the conversation.

The man gave another, identical grunt, but someone Jamie realised it was affirmative this time. He didn't know how he could discern one groan from the other, but he could, and a small cheeky smile came onto his face as the man stood up, even bigger now, hulking over nearby figures, and walked over. The men hadn't seemed to realise where Jamie was looking yet, and by the time they did, they were faced with a fist. 

The big fella knocked them out so quick that no one in the bar had any time to react, and before Jamie knew it, he was faced with three unconscious bodies and that empty mask staring at him. He stared back for a second, his eyes drifting down to the bloke's hands. He remembered them very well. His mouth almost watered at the sight. They were huge, just as he remembered. He looked back up again and suddenly felt sort of scared. Big, scary men. He didn't have good experiences. And yet his brain, despite everything, was telling him this one wasn't going to harm him. 

After a few seconds of silence, Junkrat realised that the bloke was waiting for his intructions, for him to call the next move. 

"Oh!" He exclaimed "Let's get out of here. You got any sorta vehicle in your possession at all, mate?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im hping that the story slows down a little bit after this one and i'm gonna try my best to make it that way, even though im not good at slow :") 
> 
> leave a comment about what you hope to see in this! Im trying to please everyone just a little bit :))


	16. Found // Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET MORE ROADHOG AND JUNKRAT, THE RELATIONSHIP BLOSSOMS SLOWLY 
> 
> HAVE FUN

"We have to pass by my place, mate!" Jamie said "I have to pick up my things."

His excitement could hardly be contained. He was ditching this place, he was taking a treasure with him, and he had a big beefy guy (who he'd met before!!! Wow) to protect him from his past mistakes. He was finally going to leave Aus. 

"I honestly cannot believe you own a motorcycle! That's so cool, you're going to have to tell me when and how you got it! Did you win it in a game of poker or something cool like that? Did you kill someone for it? The possibilities are endless!" Jamie was ranting and he was aware of it, but he couldn't care less. He was getting out. 

They rushed to his place and he quickly packed with him all the things that mattered (THE TREASURE, his book, some food and water and similar supplies he had left, some tools he had lying about etc) and then they made for the exit to Junkertown, surprised the Queen wasn't on their tail yet. Jamie was still talking. 

As if she was waiting for them to think of her, the second Junkrat said anything about the Queen, there was a voice behind them. 

"Hey!" She shouted "Where the bloody fuck do you think you're going, Rat?" Oh no. She sounded angry. 

He turned to the dingo killer next to him and gulped, signifying that they should start running. Just as they did, there was gunfire behind them, and the Queen continued to shout, but Junkrat wasn't listening. He was laughing. He laughed through the gunfire, the dodging of bullets, and the arrival to where the bike was. They were met with no resistance and Jamie thought it must be because of the dingo killer next to him. No one in their right mind would stand in front of him. 

"Come back here! I'm going to fucking shiv the both of ya!" The Queen was shouting in anger, and Jamie couldn't help but find it hilarious that they were defying her, that they were getting away so easily with no weapons and only a ride to get them out of there. 

As they ran, Jamie noticed that the dingo killer had grabbed a gun from one of the guards that hadn't shown any resistance to them. He realised when they both hopped on the bike, the man in front and Jamie behind him, and he was handed the gun. He shot the man a look, briefly, and gulped loudly at the gun, but he soon realised that they would need it. 

The Queen did not give up easily, and there were two vehicles behind them in no time as they drove away, desert sand making a trail in the sky in their wake. 

"Shoot the tires." The man who was driving grumbled at him, and Jamie had no time to ponder the sound of his voice before he did as he was told. 

He had no experience shooting a gun, but it took him very few tries to get the hang of it and shoot the tire of one of the cars, the car swerving dangerously and immediately coming to a halt. It took him a bit longer with the second one, but soon the cars were being left behind in the dust, and Jamie was whooping into the air happily over the sound of the engine of the bike. 

"I can't believe we just did that." He shouted, "I can't believe we just fucking did that!"

**

They drove for a while, willing to get as far away from the Queen's grasp as possible, and then settled down by a large piece of metal, lodged sideways deep into the sand, enough to offer some miniscule cover. 

They set up under there, wordless, the both of them, even Jamie, who was exhausted from the excitement he had felt just before. It was getting to almost be night. They set up a small fire to keep warm. 

It was when they sat around the fire that Jamie started to talk again. Even his tiredness couldn't stop his excitement from bursting through in his face and his words. He finally had someone to talk to! He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a proper conversation. Back with Magpie, he hadn't been an especially wordy person, but he still had a lot of things to say at all times of the day, and he guessed that such a long time without proper human contact had rendered him even more wordy than before, and he was suddenly bursting with all the things he wanted to talk about. 

The fact that they had left Junkertown, so quickly, so impromptu, was still setting in in his head, and he was struggling to catch up. Even after living his whole life in the outback, the ever changing, fast-paced lifestyle was still really different to him and a lot of the time it was easy to wake up and think for a second that he is still at Frank's, or even still at the Junkyard, before he remembers what's happened to him and how his life has changed. 

About the man. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure where this deep rooted feeling he didn't even have a name for had come from. He didn't want to call it trust, but somehow he believed that he wouldn't be strangled in his sleep tonight, no matter how easy it would be for the man in front of him to do that. He someone held some sort of belief in himself, whether true or not, that no harm would come to him. It was strange, but no matter how big the man in front of him was, Jamie still had a hard time imagining him as some murderer. He just didn't give off that vibe. Maybe it was wrong of him to believe as such, but even when he knew what the man was capable of, he could not bring himself to fear him. The memory stirred in his head, of how he had let him live, so long ago, how he'd held the other bandits back. He wondered if he remembered him. He highly doubted it. He wasn't sure if he would ever bring it up, even, but knowing that fact, in his head, was comforting for him. 

He was reminded with another look of how big the man was, his great hulking hands had gathered up the driftwood and shit that made up their fire. Jamie wanted to touch his hands. He wanted to hold them and see the difference between his hand and the man's. He wasn't sure where the urge came from, but thinking about it made his face light up. He didn't even know his name. As they sat, he decided he would just ask. 

"So!" He started "What's your name, mate?" He had a wide, excited smile on his face, his pointy canines on show. A smile that could be seen as menacing, if on any other person. 

There was a grunt in response, and Jamie smirked at the man's unwillingness to talk."Awh, come on, we're partners now! I gotta know!" 

There was a long silence that followed his statement, but Jamie felt like the man was building up to say something, so he didn't speak, he only waited. And sure enough, the man gave a hacking cough through his mask and then muttered one word.

"Roadhog." He said, quietly and gruffly. It didn't ring any bells for him, it wasn't the one he had heard years ago. But sure, name change. Junkrat knew all about wanting to change your name. He didn't mention it. 

Junkrat smiled "Well, Roadhog, that's a cool name, I'm Junkrat! Nice ta meet ya!"

He stuck his hand out for Roadhog to shake, but didn't flinch when Roadhog didn't shake it, grunting his annoyance at Jamie's want and need to talk and be social through his excitement. Junkrat didn't let himself get torn down by Roadhog's antisocial attitude. He'd come around. They'd be buddies. He was sure of it, just as he was sure that Roadie wouldn't hurt him. He put his hand down by his side again. 

"Well, Roadie, not much of a talker are ya! That's okay, I can talk enough for the both of us, I'm good at talking. I just have a lot of things that I think of, my brain works at bloody hundred kilometres an hour and-" 

"Don't call me Roadie." Roadie said gruffly. Did he have like a breathing problem? He seemed to struggle. 

"Sure thing, partner!" Junkrat once again did not let himself be deterred. 

"Don't call me partner."

"Sure thing, mate!" 

They had lizards for dinner. Jamie had continued to talk through his food, munching loudly on the crispy lizard, cooked over their fire, and talking about how he was really happy to be leaving Junkertown, his hopes for leaving Aus, and how he'd gotten sick of the Queen parading around and trying to boss everyone around when he was cut off.

"You were serious when you said you were good at talking, kid." Roadhog mumbled through his mask, clearly hoping the treasure was hugely worth it at this point. The thought sort of put Junrkat off, thinking about how annoying he must be made his heart sink a bit, but he put the thought away in the back of his head. No space for insecurities. 

Jamie shut his mouth, taken aback, but quickly shook his head and started talking "Well, first of all, I'm no kid. I'm eighteen! Or nineteen, something like that. And also, I haven't had a lot of chances to talk and I haven't had a friend in like four years so excuse me for having a lot of things to say!" He said, in a joking tone, making it clear that salty comments were not going to stop him.

"And anyway, how old are you?" He asked, purely out of curiosity. He couldn't tell Roadhog's age at all, not with the mask obscuring his face. 

He got a grunt in return, and he shrugged. He'd get the details out of him soon enough. For now, he was knackered and keen to sleep. 

"Well, I'm going to head to bed now, Roadie, mate. Wake me up when it's my turn to keep watch!" Junkrat yawned and stretched his arms, lying down on the ground and shutting his eyes, his back facing the fire and Roadhog, who grunted in an annoyed fashion but once again didn't say anything, rolling his eyes at the smaller man but letting him sleep. 

Junkrat had a brief thought about his nightmares. He hoped he wouldn't have any tonight, as many times he woke up crying or screaming loudly, and he didn't want to 1) make Roadhog (the only person willing to put up with him and protect him anymore) think he was weird and 2) he didn't want to draw attention to them. Who knew what the Queen was planning, but he was sure that they were never welcome back, and if she found them she would kill them just to make sure they never did come back. It was a very fleeting thought, but he begged his own mind to keep the trauma quiet just for one night. He couldn't mess this up. He had, so many other times before. He'd fucked up real bad before. But this time it was his chance to change his life forever. He couldn't mess it up. He fell asleep quickly.

Roadhog watched his form for a little while and pondered how that stick of a boy was comfortable sleeping so heavily around someone he barely knew. Let alone him, Roadhog. He was either very brave or very stupid and Roadhog knew which one he thought Junkrat was. He didn't know anything about him, but somehow he didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the box.

He was going to be proven wrong, sure, but it is important that you know that Roadhog did not hold much value to Jamie for a long time. And he certainly didn't think that this encounter would change his life as much as it did. Another kid in the desert, another dirty rat to protect, another so called treasure. He kept putting his chances and his hope into things that never ended up working out, and why would this be any different?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!! <3


	17. Found // Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope yall enjoy ! :))
> 
> is startng to get a bit more domestic!! <33

Jamie was plagued by night terrors that night as well, granted not as stressful and horrid as they usually were. 

Jamie could deal with memories most of the time. When his brain pulled out the darkest drawers and things he kept inside himself that he'd buried at a hope of leading a life that he could hold on to, he could put up with it, just for the night. It was when it started to come up with scenarios based on these memories that it fucked him over really bad. 

Many times he'd had dreams so realistic he'd woken up screaming for it all to just end. Many times he had convinced himself in his sleep that he never left. That he was still there. His body had more marks than it did now, both bruises and cuts and brandings like the one on his hip that he tried not to think much about. Many times his brain had convinced him that Frank was a lot friendlier with him in a way that he didn't want him to be, that he was still there under his grasp, forever his and only his and every part of his mind and body belonging to that horrid man. His brain was creative in ways to torture him as repentance for shoving all these memories away. 

He supposed it was the price he payed for repressing his memories and hoping that it would let him lead his normal life. It hadn't even been that many years but he had managed to pull off looking just as damaged as everyone else and not a little bit more. He didn't want to stick out as a weakness, because he knew that that was what got him to Frank's in the first place. He needed to be one of the other suffering souls in the outback. Not a victim. Not a fucking victim, like Frank tried to have him be. 

He supposed that to the outsider who had only knowledge about outback life, he didn't seem any more fucked up than the rest of the crazy cunts that lived in Australia nowadays. And that's the way he liked it. Opening up was weakness and he wouldn't be slave to another Frank again, not by a long shot. 

He supposed he should be afraid of Roadhog. He still couldn't remember his actual name, that he used to know. He knew that the mere size of the man should bring back things he kept hidden and things he wanted to forget. It had with every other man anywhere near his size. Jamie had a fear of older men and he couldn't help it at all, all he could do was try not to let them know, because he knew they'd try to take advantage of that. He was afraid of men, the very men he used to want to love and kiss when he was younger. But not Roadhog. He was not afraid of Roadhog, he was instead dipping headfirst into this and he knew he was going to get himself hurt like last time he put his trust in a man like that. Like with Magpie. He trusted him, he got his affection and companionship, they were best mates, but then what? Magpie died, because of Jamie to make it worst, and Jamie was alone. It was better since then to stay away from others and he knew it. 

So why was he ignoring every single instinct in his body, based on actual evidence from past trauma, and continuing to believe that Roadhog would not shank him in his sleep. It was something that deeply troubled him. He hoped his brain wouldn't get creative with nightmares and Roadhog's cold mask and hulking form (that Jamie knew he should be afraid of, to add to that) because he didn't know if he could bear to be near him if that happened. 

Jamie dreamt lightly that night, although his sleep was nothing but light and airy. He dreamt of hands grazing his sides and creeping further downwards. There was a hand over his mouth, and the matching one was not on his body but instead on the owner of the hand. There was another pair of hands bellow his waist. He was smart enough to know this was a memory, even as he became aware that he was dreaming. 

The hands were all over him. There were few of them but they felt like many. They suffocated him, their grasp turning his body purple and red with shame and their fingerprints could leave behind the simplest and yet most hurtful scars, in the way he could still feel their touch when he was awake. For a long time his body had been his home. Then someone had barged into the house and taken all of his belongings and they'd marked the walls and let him behind. The touch in the memories was the simplest and yet most painful torture. The reminder that the house did not belong to him anymore. 

There was more to the memory. More things that he remembered that happened after, but his body woke him before they could get to that. He was breathing heavily, and his hand clutched his own shirt tightly. If Roadhog had noticed Junkrat's uneasiness, he didn't comment on it. Jamie brushed off the swell of emotion and the need to cry and instead pushed the emotion down, offering Roadhog to swap with him for watch. The man agreed with a grunt and turned around to sleep, clearly very exhausted although it hadn't been Jamie's turn to watch exactly. Jamie assumed he would be woken up in the middle of the night so they would share an equal load, and that must have been what Roadhog was planning before Jamie's body got other ideas. 

He sat watch and looked at the empty sky. He didn't remember what stars looked like, but he doubted that this empty dark blackness above them could beat stars. They were not visibly anymore. Like the light at the end of the tunnel, they had faded, and Junkrat didn't tend to look at the sky a lot because it was easy to get lost in the vastness of it all. The ideation that he was insignificant and meaningless and his struggle, at the end of the day, would mean nothing. It was an overwhelming thought. Another ransacked house among a neighbourhood, a city, a whole country of abandoned houses. It always made it dawn on him that no one cared about them, about this country, let alone them as individuals. No matter how much you redecorate the house, it's still the same house, it still smells dirty and has cracks on the walls that no plaster can fix. No matter how much you dress it up, it's the same house. No matter how far away Jamie runs, how much he changed his appearance, how far down he shoves the memories and how many bodyguards he has to protect him, he is still the same house. He is already abandoned. There's nothing he can do to fix that. 

**

By a week later, news of Junkrat and Roadhog and their elusive treasure had spread far and wide, and it was only three burglary attempts and four successes later that they realised they would honestly have to get off the continent to find peace and sell the treasure without dying. 

Crime felt good. A lifetime of paying away at people that held more authority than you had tired Junkrat out and it felt good to point a knife at someone's throat and ask them to give up the supplies they had. Felt good to hold that sort of control, even just for a second. Nice to see how the tables flip. They didn't kill anyone. No one here really deserved it, no one they had encountered at least. Jamie only really held a grudge against bandits and gangs that took things and people that didn't belong to them. Roadhog didn't seem to hold a grudge on anyone, but Jamie was acutely aware of the fact that of Roadhog wished, he would kill someone without hesitation. He knew that about him. 

He thought he may have come close, plenty of times actually, to getting Roadhog annoyed enough to choke him out and kill him. Somehow, that hadn't happened yet, and Jamie was holding out with hopes of friendship still, even though Roadhog wasn't showing many signs of wanting to or even letting any information about himself be known. He was as much of a mystery as he was intriguing, and Jamie still had that weird feeling about him that he didn't recognise, the same one he'd had back when he'd first seen and met the man, one he couldn't recognise. Dared he call it, possibly, attraction.

Which was a silly idea, stemming mostly from the fact that Junkrat both didn't know Roadhog in the slightest, but also on the fact that he had no idea what attraction was. He'd felt it rarely, it was hard to focus on something like that when you were trying to survive the cold world that was Australia, but then all other contact he'd had with people other than Magpie and the Shrike, dare he mention her, had not been consensual or pleasant for him. He had not once in his life thought to enjoy romantic contact that he experienced. It was a generally negatively tied idea in his mind. He didn't think that attraction to another human being, let alone a man, would even be possible for him. At least when he first left Frank, the mere idea of being touched or held even, even the gentlest touch he could imagine, by another man was painstakingly horrifying to think about and even made him physically sick. But things had changed with the arrival of Roadhog. He didn't want to call it natural attraction because he didn't believe in that, but there was just something about the man that made him want his attention, his approval. He wanted to impress him, and he was getting nowhere. Roadhog was unwilling to open up and talk and barely gave him the time of day, and Junkrat. Well, he didn't have experience in a lot of normal human contact, let alone romantic in any fashion. The only thing he knew was that he wasn't in complete denial but that was about it. It was upsetting to think that it wouldn't lead anywhere, but Junkrat did as he always did. He ignored it and moved on. 

The first few weeks went by without a mark on their bodies and they actually found themselves trying to find a way out. Trying to find a way to get off this country, maybe head to Europe, somewhere there. They found that the only way they'd be able to leave would be to find a boat, as airplanes and anything flying basically had disappeared after the whole omnium thing. Just not accessible anymore. 

Things carried on this way. Junkrat and Roadhog were just Junkrat and Roadhog, and they stole and ran from everyone who chased them and they used their knives to fight off anyone that would come near them. They were not friends, they were not even partners, as Roadhog insisted. He was Jamie's bodyguard and that was it. Employee and Employer. They continued their fast and heavy lifestyle, eating and drinking whatever they could to survive and barely staying out of the sun and out of harm's way.

The way that things settled down for them was the shack, large shack, found abandoned and empty of all signs of life. It smelt suspiciously of dead things although there was no body to be found. It was shelter, however, and they crouched out in it. There was a bed, but it was in desperate need of a fix, considering the wood was missing underneath and it would cave in whenever someone sat on it even, let alone someone like Roadhog. After two days of sleeping there, they realised no one was coming back to it. Though both held a fear of settling down in one place, afraid of being followed, this place was so far out from all other things that temptation was too great to be held off and they agreed that they would instead stay there, fix the place up and arm it, and they'd make sure that when they were out on their endeavours no one would go back to this place with them or even know where to look.

Junkrat and Roadhog. They settled down for now. They slept on the floor for the next week.


	18. Found // Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooo longer chapter + character development, im rly spoiling you guys rn

Renovations started with Roadhog. 

It seemed that Jamie learnt something new about him through that experience. He was not a dirty person. He did not enjoy the dirt on his body or the dirtiness of the house. He did not enjoy the environment that they were in. Jamie on the other hand. Well it couldn't be said that he enjoyed being dirty, but dirty and tainted were words he used for himself often, and in disgust, and feelings he could not get rid of. As for the environment, well, he was used to it.

So Roadhog woke him up one day with a grunt. 

"Get up, Rat." He grunted beneath his mask. Jamie hadn't once seen him take it off. Even when he ate, he brought the food up under the mask, pushing it up only slightly so that he wasn't visible at all. 

"Whazzat..?" Jamie had murmured in a tired fashion. 

"We're fixing up this dump."

"O-Okay.."

Jamie got Roadhog to bring metal from outside, scrap pieces that he could find anywhere. He himself searched around the house for things he could find that would help them out. Previous old furniture could be used to make new furniture, and there was plenty of wiring that didn't work anymore and things that would later be useful that he put away in a box he found. All in all, he thought they should knock the walls down. Then it would all be one room. They could use the wooden walls to create like a ramp and a second flooring to store certain things, and maybe even create a more hidden storage space for things that were kind of irreplaceable (cough cough Omnium treasure). 

They ended up doing that. They cleared everything out. Jamie found tools that he embraced with excitement and curiosity. Roadhog seemed to know a little something about building, even if just basic stuff, so soon Jamie's imagination had come to pay off as the house was cleared out and a small above storage was made, as well as a room. These were details that they would think about refining later. That was their first day's job, day to night. The second day, Jamie fixed the bed with metal. They realised they would have to share it that very day, but no one even said it. It was unspoken but known, even if not completely agreed by. The bed went in one corner and Jamie built a little metal ramp for the motorbike, knowing they couldn't keep it outside. He hadn't built these kinds of things before, and they required different tools that he had to get used to, but eventually, as he did with building and the such, he picked it up well and was a wiz at it by the third day. The ramp went near the door, which they built another one of. They left the front one there, but put a larger one to the side, so that they could bring in the motorbike. Jamie made it out of metal as well, and put a handle on it so that they could drag it up and down to shut it and open it. It had railings on the wall that it followed and Jamie was very proud of it. He made himself a bench for the tools and to store materials for all things he might want to tinker with, and he made two chairs and a table for them to sit at for food, a foreign concept to him that Roadhog had insisted on. Jamie had come to think that before this whole life, he had been a man that appreciated a civilised and clean lifestyle. It wasn't much, but he sucked up any information on the man that he could. 

Roadhog repaired the existing stove, or more like developed, as for their lack of gas they made it a bit more like a wood oven. It had the ability to contain the fire that Jamie loved so much and keep it neat. The toilet was outside. As in, the ground. Who the fuck can find porcelain in the outback anyway. They made a tub, however, out of metal. They didn't know how often it would be in use, for lack of water, but its presence was comforting to Roadhog, who was a man who loved a bath. 

They replaced bits of the wall and ceiling that were rotting away. They stored their money and treasure in the room, which Jamie would have to think of a way to secure. They stored their food and water in the above compartment, and Roadhog used a pointy fucking stick and his hair to sew together a ripped sheet for warmth. It was pretty disgusting, but so resourceful that Jamie had to swoon. 

It took them a week, but the bike was inside, they were both inside, they had their place fixed up. This was it, as close to home as Jamie would probably ever get. 

Another detail that Jamie now knew about Roadhog was that he carried around these canisters of some sort of gas. He hadn't ever seen him use them, and was not aware of their existence, until Roadhog decided to move the majority of them with the food and water supply, keeping only a few cans in his bike. He had asked Roadie about them, but gotten no response except for a grunt. He didn't know what they were, but he saw Roadie take one only a day later. He had been carrying a bunch of things for Jamie to store inside, and he'd gotten out of breath. So much so, that he grabbed one of the cans, crushed it against a certain part of his mask, and inhaled. Jamie didn't ask, but Roadhog was fully aware and possibly upset that in the situation, Jamie had to see. Junkrat didn't end up asking again, and he didn't wonder where Roadhog got it from, such a large quantity as well.

The bed had originally been a problem. It was uncomfortable and way too close for comfort, especially for Roadhog. Jamie hadn't had that much of a problem being close to Roadie, although his only problem had been Roadie's own discomfort about it. But nights got colder and colder and they hadn't yet gotten a way to keep warm, with one blanket to share, and so the heat of another person became more and more welcomed by both of them. It wasn't something they had commented of, but instead something that just happened.

It had been a month before Jamie decided to start getting his hands dirty with making things. And the first things on the list were obviously guns. 

For Roadhog, he already had plenty of ideas. He knew it would be possibly the only gun that Roadhog would have held that fit his hands perfectly. H unfortunately couldn't measure his bodyguard's hands, but he could see them and that was about enough. It took him a while to figure out how guns worked, but he had experience from Junkertown from seeing the old man make them, although he himself had never been allowed. It took him three days to figure it out, but eventually it was there, ginormous in his own hands, but a gun none the less. He had developed it to need only scrap as ammunition, which was incredibly useful in the landscape around them, as scrap of any kind was everywhere. 

For himself, he wasn't sure. He didn't want a normal gun, he wanted something that fit him. Something as wild and chaotic as he wanted to be. The thought of fire crossed his mind multiple times at night as he pondered it. He decided to let Roadhog do the shooting for now.

"Hey big guy." He exclaimed from his desk space to Roadhog, who was lounging on the bed. 

There was the usual grunt in return. 

"Come get yourself a gift." Jamie smirked to himself as he heard the bed creak and large steps came towards him. 

Roadhog looked over his shoulder to the gun on the desk, grunting as if to ask what that was. 

"I made you a gun." Jamie explained, and he lifted it (with great difficulty) and put it into Roadhog's hands.

Roadhog was quiet for quite a while, breathing raggedly and staring at the weapon in his hands, his face and emotion not visible from behind the mask. Jamie desperately tried to hide the fact that he was excited, that he needed Roadhog to like it, to commend him for it, to thank him even. 

"…How's it work?" Roadhog grumbled eventually, and Junkrat was more than keen to answer him. He smirked proudly.

"Well, you just shove some scrap in there," He showed him the compartment "And it works! It shoots it out, you know. Like a gun." 

There was once again a long silence as Junkrat waited for a response, standing up in front of Roadhog and anxiously bouncing on his toes. 

"… Thanks." Roadhog eventually said, possibly more out of obligation than actual thankfulness, but Junkrat could bear with that and it was certainly better than nothing, so he smiled widely and nodded his head.

"You owe me now!" He laughed jokingly, although Roadhog's angry grumble made the joke less funny. 

He had done something for Roadhog, at no personal gain of his own, basically. Junkrat was half astounded with himself and half proud. It felt like he was changing a lot over a short period of time. He was being open with Roadhog, living in a steady house with steady food and water (he'd even gained some weight because of that! No more than a kilo, but it was still something), building things and doing things for his bodyguard that gave him only happiness to know that he had helped. Even his night terrors had started receding a little bit and he hadn't found himself crying in his sleep for a long time now. Things were looking up for him. 

**

They went out and ended up having to kill a group of raiders on their tail. They'd been crouching out in some sort of building and they were the ones that had been trying to track Junkrat and Roadhog, so they clearly had to kill them before they got found out and killed or something. 

They raided the place for food and supplies, and Jamie even found some locks with keys that they could use on the doors at their place, and other things he could build with. But the most interesting thing he found was actually a dirty, fucked up book in the corner of the room. His heart filled with inevitable delight at the sight of it, knowing it was now his second book, which he once again couldn't read. No matter, he grabbed it immediately and found he could recognise a word on the cover, for its onomatopoeia in name and its easy letters. 

"B-Bomb…?" Jamie mumbled to himself as he looked over the cover. It was just letters on it, but Bomb was the only word he could see. His face lit up.

Bombs. Now if that wasn't chaotic he didn't know what was. He may have just gotten an idea for his own gun. 

**

The supplies they got enabled him to figure out how to make lights, and now they wouldn't be in complete darkness at night. The book remained hidden with his other one, until he got the strength and swallowed down his pride enough to show them to Roadhog and find out if the large man could read. Jamie somehow highly doubted he couldn't, possibly from his dislike of dirtiness and general mess. It was hard to imagine what sort of person Roadhog was before the omnium blew up, but in Junkrat's mind he was definitely one that could read. 

The books lay untouched but treasured by Junkrat secretly. Whenever he could, as in whenever Roadhog wasn't looking, he would grab them out from their hiding spot and flick through the pages mindlessly, his brain sucking in any information, bare letters, words, that he could find, a desperate attempt to not let the happiness of knowledge slip away from him.

He continued on like that for weeks. 

He developed a system for their treasure, finally, one he still hadn't let Roadhog look at. He wasn't sure why, actually, he supposed he found it nice to know he held some sort of power in this relationship of theirs, whatever it was. The system he'd developed depended on two plates, blending almost seamlessly into the wooden floor. When they were both pressed on, the mechanism was triggered, and the door was opened. It took him two days to install it, as he had to pull up the old wood and get underneath to rig it up. 

Their life was good. Junkrat made changes and improvements every day, he learnt more and more things and his fingers got better at moving around the tools and the metal, handling it all like he knew he was supposed to, litheness and calmness in his methodical movements. The way that he went about building felt as natural to him as breathing. It was good to finally have something with no restrictions, something all his, that he could enjoy doing. 

Roadhog... well, their experience with bonding was less than enlightening. Junkrat tried multiple times to promote some sort of bonding experience, asking Roadhog questions about himself and even offering up random information about himself, things he liked, past experiences (the happy ones: "You know, I ate a lizard twice this big once!") and the like. He was getting nowhere. And yet somehow, this so feigned attraction that held Junkrat to Roadhog had multiplied, just at his mere mysteriousness. 

Junkrat still wasn't sure what it was. The protectiveness, perhaps? The mystery, the fact that they had to sleep all buddy buddy? He didn't know. The best he could actually do was to ignore it. He continued to remind himself. Ignore it. It doesn't matter. 

It seemed that the bonding experience Jamie wished for would never happen. And yet, it did, without him even having to spur it onwards. 

It was a night after a cold run to raid a nearby camp, Junkrat's long blond hair had been waving in the darkness from where he sat in the motorbike. His view obstructed by Roadhog. He mentally reminded himself to work on a sidecar eventually. They'd raided, gotten out and gone home after checking that they were not being followed. 

Jamie had developed his best system by far only a day before. It was a radiation filter, a tank he was planning to install at the roof of the house. It didn't rain very often in the outback, but it also wasn't such an unspeakable occurrence. The only problem with it was that it was potentially dangerous to drink or be in at all. The rain was debilitating and hindering to anyone that wished to get a day's work in when it happened. Jamie had considered harnessing its power for a great long time, and he was now able to. The tank he was going to install would capture the water, filter it as much as possible to make it usable, and then drain it down through a long metal tube, right into their water storage tank. He was very proud of himself for that one. Even Roadhog had seemed impressed when it was pitched to him, and he was always a bit hard to read, mask and all. 

They'd made it home and had both been embarrassingly tired. Jamie just about convinced Roadhog to cook them the three rabbits they'd found. Jamie would have done it himself but after an incident with the stove he wasn't allowed near it. They'd eaten their food, hungry from the day's work, and had crawled into bed soon after, their eyes shutting as soon as they hit the mattress. 

Jamie's imagination ran wild, as if it had caught him in his vulnerable, tired state, enough to pull up freakish images from his memory and twist them into the nastiest things. He rarely remembered his night terrors after he woke up, but fading images of Frank's face, of a pain in his groin, pain in his non-existent leg, were things that he was left with as he woke up screaming. 

"-The fuck-" Roadhog had muttered as he woke up to Junkrat, screaming loudly into the night. He had been mumbling in his sleep, then moaning, and then had proceeded into screaming.

Roadhog dashed into action, grabbing Junkrat and shaking him initially, as if to check if he was awake. Realising that he was, and seeing the panic in the man's eyes, he stayed still for a second, almost shocked by his inability to act accordingly. 

He knew what he needed to do. He needed to shush him gently, calm him down, ask for permission to touch him and if he got it, he needed to hold him. He knew it, Roadhog knew it. He knew exactly the course of action that he had to take. He knew it because his wife had been a marine and he knew all about PTSD and the ways in which it had changed them in years previous. 

He froze. For a few seconds that felt like a lifetime, he remained frozen. Unable to move. The thought of gentleness, tenderness, was so far away from him. The part of himself that he didn't understand anymore, didn't recognise as someone that he knew. It was so hard to conjure up the image of himself, comforting his wife, holding her close and feeling the beating of her heart against his chest, feeling the way she calmed down after her attacks. It was something he had buried in the sand when he'd become Roadhog. Something he never thought he would be faced with again. He'd sworn he would never come back to himself. This part of him had died with his wife, the compassion and the caring, it was all gone, he convinced himself. But he couldn't forget it, not when he was stared in the face with this boy, a boy that he remembered was startlingly close to how old his daughter would have been, he couldn't forget. Mako burned with firey rage, but his recalling had brought tears to Roadhog's eyes. 

Mako shook himself back to earth and swallowed harshly, the sight of Junkrat crying still in front of him, but now his screaming had digressed into whimpers. 

"Sh.. sh…" He mumbled, his voice sounding foreign to himself. "Calm down." 

If Junkrat was startled by Roadhog's tone, his actual words, he did not show it, too caught up in his panic probably. Roadhog mustered up whatever strength and emotion he had left for this and continued to speak.

"'S okay. Just a dream." He mumbled gruffly, and Junkrat seemed more comforted by that than Roadhog would have expected. Maybe he just never had this kind of support in these moments, and now it felt like it was heaven blessed. Scratch the maybe, he definitely never had this before. 

Junkrat didn't seem to think about it when he pushed himself up against Roadhog with purpose, sniffling as his arms came to wrap around Roadhog. He shut his eyes tightly, and Roadhog watched him slip back into slumber. His arms came gently to wrap around Junkrat as well. Guilt filled his heart at the action and he ignored the tears that he realised now had welled up in his eyes. He leaned his head back down on the bed and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my new kitty was watching me type this and grabbing at my hands so it took me AGES but he is too cute to tell off tbh


	19. Found // Seven

They did not address what had happened the night before, but somehow since that moment, Junkrat's glances to Roadhog were just a little bit softer, his eagerness to please doubled. 

Roadhog had only a slight feeling of dread attached to the situation, mostly stemming from the fact that he was almost too sure that he was going to start rapidly getting attached to Junkrat from now on, something that aroused a deep fear inside him. 

The prospect of being close with someone was undoubtedly as foreign to Junkrat as it now was to himself. Roadhog had tried to keep thoughts of his wife in the back of his mind, but his guilt had only welled up since the event that took place. It had felt like something so small at the time, okay, maybe not small, but it had certainly not seemed as big as it later felt to him. Roadhog may have even tried to brush it off as something that wasn't worth meddling on. But it was clear that it meant way more than that to Junkrat, and it was becoming harder and harder for Roadhog to pretend that it meant nothing to him. 

Their thoughts of the event eventually had to be drained away as the months went past and their names and faces grew in an infamous fashion. Their lives continued as normal, thieving, running, hiding. Surviving. And yet it was the best life Junkrat had ever experienced. 

The way that he knew he could rely on Roadhog. The way he could trust someone again. It hadn't happened since Magpie, but this situation was made better by the fact that Roadhog and Junkrat did not stand a constant chance of being slaughtered. I mean, they certainly did, but somehow Junkrat felt like the chances weakened in the face of Roadhog, who had grown so steady with the gun that Junkrat himself had forged with is own hands that it scared him sometimes. The one thing that continued to scary him steadily was his own uselessness on the battlefield. For a while he had settled for a sword type weapon he had looted off of some bandits. But he soon found he was useless at using it. He was desperate for the chance to ask Roadhog to just read him some of that bomb book, but the idea was still embarrassing to him, even after he had broken down and cuddled Roadhog, something that they continued to not bring up.

It became easier to forget it happened as the time went past. If there was a chance to comment on it, it was certainly gone. Their chances at furthering their scarce relationship into blooming were becoming rarer and rarer. Junkrat felt like it was a bit one sided at times. Even he was scared to open up more, but not as much as Roadhog seemed to be. He wouldn't admit it, obviously, not even in the face of death. Roadhog, scared? Of something as simple as human contact? Never.

Things were okay. They were. Things were good. Apart from their ignorance of whatever thing was going on between them and their refusal to comment on their cuddling session after Junkrat's meltdown, things were okay. 

And sure enough, things went downhill. And only in the worst way possible.

They got captured. 

It was on a run out of their house, thankfully no one had found it. They had run into a group of bandits and taken them on, Junkrat even proving useful by shanking one or two guys. Things were in their favour as always, until it seemed that both groups, the Bandits and the Junkers, were snuck up on by a third party, that Junkrat did not become aware of until he was on the ground with his vision going blurry. The group that had attacked him had to be six to seven people, all with their advanced gear, clearly not bandits, they seemed to be colony funded. They were from somewhere, and they had found them. They undoubtedly knew all about the prices on their heads, and Junkrat knew that if he closed his eyes right now he would either never wake up, or wake up to something he didn't want to go through. He tried to use that thought to fuel his own willingness to stay awake, but the body's natural urges are hard to go against and he found that no matter how hard he tried to not let the darkness take over his vision, and how much he strained to stop the blackness and fuzziness in his brain from taking him over, it eventually did and he couldn't do anything about it.

He passed out, despite his refusal to do so. He didn't know how they got Hog down, but when he woke up, he was in a carriage with Roadhog tied up next to him, clearly heavily sedated. Even so, his eyes were half open and he seemed to be clinging on to some sort of fleeting consciousness. He couldn't move, his large, meaty hands hanging by his sides and tied up to the metal bars of the carriage that they were in. Junkrat knew he couldn't do anything. The sight of him, incapacitated like this, in a way and weakness that Junkrat had never seen him before, was enough to put a pinch of fear further into his heart. No weapon on him, no way for Roadhog to help, and his own vision fuzzy from being knocked so hard over the head. There was nothing that he could do but wait and see where this would lead them, though he knew it would be nowhere good for him or for Hog. How had they been caught out like this? What had happened. Junkrat couldn't help but think that it was his fault. He couldn't fight properly and he hadn't heard them come behind him. Fear and blame troubled his mind. 

They were in there for quite a while and Roadhog got sedated once more. Junkrat however was left alone, as it seemed he didn't pose much threat, a stick thin dizzy man with no weapon and no bodyguard. Junkrat knew how ridiculous he must have looked, trying to keep a defiant look on his face in front of their captors and trying to seem like he was much stronger than he actually was. He knew it was failing. By the way that they were looking at him, their sneers and cocky smirks shooting in his direction. He knew he was pathetic. 

He curled up with his arms around his legs and shoved his head between his knees to keep as calm as possible. He had no choice but to wait. 

The desert was as seemingly endless as it always was, and Junkrat could not recognise one side from the other. For all he knew they were circling. But somehow, after a day or two, and plenty more sedation, the road started to seem almost familiar. That rock, that giant boulder, the skeleton of a dingo, half buried in the sand. Sand dunes and smaller bumps in the road that the car stumbled over. It all seemed eerily close to something in his mind that kept tickling at him, in the back and yet unable to be called forward for all his shitty, radiation caused memory loss and trouble. 

It wasn't until they were almost there that Junkrat's shitty memory kicked in and he realised why the hell this all seemed so familiar to him. His stupid, stupid brain, his stupid memory, his fucked up anxiety filled lungs and brain. He almost screamed at the sight of the gates of Battery City. No. This was a bad dream, this was another nightmare and any second he would wake up and be right beside Hog, a Hog that is present and awake. He knew it. He hit himself over the head once or twice, but the gates only got closer, and his inability to stop himself from crying out became greater. He looked to his side and noticed that Roadhog had opened his eyes. 

"Where… where the fuck did they take us?" 

"Roadie, Roadie you have to listen to me." Junkrat whispered with urgency so they wouldn't be heard, and tried to speak quickly so Hog wouldn't pass out again. 

"We are in a lot of fucking trouble right now. I know who they're taking us to, and he's going to fucking bust both of our balls, we are in huge fucking trouble mate, you have to come through with something right now!" Junkrat was whisper shouting, his pupils gone tiny from the stone cold, pure fear that was running through his veins. Roadhog must have noticed, or maybe he was so drugged up that he wasn't aware that he was speaking at all.

"Relax. Nothing will happen to you, kid." He mumbled, and Junkrat quickly lied to himself and said that Roadie wasn't aware of that he was saying, in his state that he was. If he didn't lie to himself he ran the risk of actually believing that he wasn't fucked right now. 

"Don't call me kid.." Was all he managed to say, and he sat back down again as to not be noticed, taking deep breaths and trying to remember Roadhog's words exactly the night that he had calmed him down. 

They stopped soon and pulled them outside. It took a lot of manpower to move Roadhog to a cell, but at least they were thankfully placed in the same one together. Junkrat's only problem was that it was the exact same one he was in last time he was in this godforsaken place, and he knew how the routine went this time around. The ground was grimy as ever around him and he stuck his hands to the bars, his panic desperately making him try to rip them apart, though his muscles were not nearly existent enough to even think of attempting that. But he wasn't thinking. He was panicked. He was going to fucking die, and (God forbid he would think that man's name) he would draw out Junkrat's death as long and torturous as possible, with as much crowd fucking participation as he could, if Junkrat knew him at all. The thought made him cry out and mash his fists against the metal bars until red blood was dripping down his mauled knuckles. It had been two years since he had been in range of this place. Was he just so unlucky? Why did things always turn bad the second they would turn good?

"Junk.. what the fuck.." Roadhog mumbled, still half in a mindless state, but sounding present enough for Junkrat to hold a conversation with.

"This is where I was two years ago, Hog." Junkrat said solemnly, sliding down onto his knees in a defeated stance. "Before Junkertown."

"…And I assume you left for a reason." Roadhog came to his own conclusion and for once Junkrat was glad that the conversation was moving quickly. He didn't know when He would walk in and interrupt them once and for all.

"He'll be here to talk to us soon. Pray that somehow he doesn't recognise me."

"How many tall, blonde, irradiated men whose primary weight source is their metal peg leg do you know?" 

"Okay, that's actually quite fair. Pray for it anyway." 

"I will." 

And sure enough, there it was. The same footsteps, slowly and almost royally in fashion, going down the ladder and approaching them slowly. Junkrat had half the mind to move, but yet again his body didn't cooperate. He fought hard against the limb locking fear to move himself up and back up from the bars, so he was next to Hog, almost curled up and hidden next to him. The scene he was experiencing, the scenery combined with the familiar sound, was triggering visions for him, which was also great. Suddenly he had the very familiar scent of a man's skin in his nose, and he knew he was only imagining it up, from his visions, his memories. He knew no one was there right in front of his nostrils, but he could smell them anyway. 

"Well, well, well.." The voice he dreaded to hear spoke. "Hello, little Rat."

Junkrat's voice took on the strongest tone it could. When he spoke, he still sounded scared, but maybe not as scared as he felt, and he thanked God for small mercies. 

"Frank."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAANNDDDD thats the end of "Found" ! see ya soon! sorry for late update btw, was busy!!


	20. Found // Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave a comment if you enjoyed!!  
> thank you for the support <3
> 
> TW for description of gore in this chapter. also for implied past rape (but if you've read this far here i'm sure that either won't be a problem for you)

"Been a while, hasn't it?" Frank came up to the cell just as Jamie shuffled himself as far back as he could. Roadhog watched on, sensing Junkrat's growing fear.

"I'd ask if you missed me but I can assume that you haven't. Whores like you have no respect and gratitude for people like me. I gave you food, shelter, water, and you stil left." Frank was speaking with a mocking smile on his lips, and Junkrat wanted to puke, right on the spot. He came scarily close to it and he felt like he would for a second, but instead of puke a bunch of words fell out of his mouth. 

"That's fucking bullshit though, innit.." He scoffed before he could stop himself and the look on Frank's face came scarily close to murderous before he could even realise it, the smile dropping off as he came a bit closer to the cell. 

"Now, you watch out, Jamie." Junkrat barely processed the use of his real name "You're in my possession again, and I don't wanna be fuckin' reminding ya how to treat your owner with respect." 

Junkrat fell silent, afraid of consequences. Roadhog grunted angrily from his corner. Frank turned to him. 

"Who the fuck do we have here, then?" He chuckled. "Seems the whore got himself a nice boyfriend-"

"Leave him out of it." Jamie said, forcing himself to spit the words out. They sounded way too brave, coming from his mouth. They did not fit in his gums, they sounded wrong. 

Frank looked at him with disbelief. A scoff fell from his smirking lips and he put a hand against the bars. He hadn't expected it, not from Jamie. Junkrat wondered if the words had sounded as foreign to him as they did to himself. 

"Well, looks like you grew a pair while you were away." Frank chuckled. At that moment, two guards came in, and the sight of them made Jamie's stomach churn with memories. They weren't the same ones, but their sadistic grins made him think that they might be. 

"Too bad that I'm going to have to hold you to my promise anyway." Jamie stirred as the cell was opened, and he went into clear panic, begging words slipping from his lips as he shuffled back on his hands. His brain was going into overdrive. 

"I said that if you ever wronged me, I'd cut your fucking dick off, didn't I, Jamie baby?" Frank said. 

The bodyguards came into the cell and held Jamie's hands, pinning him down onto his knees so that Frank could come in and lean down, his hand caressing the side of Jamie's face, sweating now from stress and anxiety. Junkrat felt like he was going to pass the fuck out. 

Roadhog wished he could move his limbs so he could pound that fuckin dirtbag into the ground, get him to fucking take. His. Hands. Off. Junkrat. He could see the man was slipping into panic and in a second of bloody red rage, everything that Junkrat ever cried out in his sleep made sense to him. Made sense in the way that his arms were being held and he shifted away from the touch but couldn't move, from the way the man was stroking his face right now, like a dog. From his words. 'This is where I was two years ago, Hog.' It all made fucking sense now and Roadhog was unsure if he'd felt such burning rage in his heart since he'd found his house burned, ruins of his own creation. The memory only fuelled his unspeakable anger, and he grunted and shifted his body as much as he could. The man who had been dubbed 'Frank' only laughed. 

"You've have plenty of shit in your system yet, fatty, don't you worry." He laughed and Junkrat pursed his lips from where he was being held, his breathing speeding up. 

Roadhog had the startling realisation that watching Junkrat in pain brought him scarily close to going berserk and he didn't know why. He didn't understand. All he knew was that he wanted to punch those motherfuckers away from him and hold him again, like he had when he'd had that nightmare, until the tremors faded away from his body and he would fall asleep against Roadhog as if nothing had happened. They'd wake up and it all will have been a dream. 

"Now, I do have a deal to offer you, though, Jamie." Frank spoke, his bodyguards holding Jamie down still.

"If you take up your old position without any struggle, starting right now, I'll do you a favour and I'll take another part of you instead. Possibly something a little less useful than your dick, how's that? Good bloody deal, innit?" Frank offered, picking dirt from under his fingernails. He came closer to Jamie, his tone taking on a slightly sweet side, one that Jamie had had used on him before, as if trying to convince him, suck him back into the cycle Jamie had once known. 

"I did always like you, Jamie. Did always think you looked good on your knees like this, even when they brought you in for me as a bloody fifteen-year-old. So just, do yaself a favour and agree with me, right now. And after I take a part of you away, we'll forget about it. It'll be over and done with. All in the past." Frank stroked Jamie's hair, noticing how it had grown long despite the patches that were missing since he had shaved it off himself. 

"Come on, Jamie, you're much older now, practically a grown man. Should know a good deal when you see one. Should know what's best for you." The smile on his lips made Jamie physically sick. And yet… he shot a look to Roadhog. Maybe there was a way to get out of this after all. For Roadhog, at least. 

"You let him go, though." Jamie murmured, and Frank smirked. Roadhog grunted Junkrat's name loudly, his anger resonating in his voice. It made Jamie wince. 

"Whatever you say, love." Frank stood up "But, I gotta make an example out of ya, Jamie. He's going to see our little show, and then we'll let him go, just like you said." Frank said, and Junkrat supposed it was good enough. 

"Junkrat!" Roadhog grunted angrily again. Junkrat once again opted to ignore him. It was easier that way. After all, soon whatever they had would be history, and Roadie would leave him behind here to rot, as it seemed was his fate. No matter how many times he got back up, he always got beaten down again. 

"Okay. I'll do it." Jamie immediately agreed. It was better that Roadhog got away rather than them both being stuck here. Jamie tried to imagine what job they'd give Roadhog, but knowing Battery City's love of fights and all sorts of violent and bloody attractions, his mind didn't have to travel too far. 

Frank smiled and clapped his hands together. "Great! Let's rock and roll." 

With a wave of his hand, the guards grabbed Jamie by his skinny arms and dragged him to a room that seemed way too familiar. Frank's. The same firepit where his mark had been lit up burned in the room, a new addition next to it however in the form of a metal chair, looking unnervingly clean and shiny in comparison to the rest of the room, which was raggedy and dust covered as Jamie remembered. 

He was strapped down to the chair before he could realise, and his heart was beating so quickly that his vision was going blurry, his eyes missing the sight of Roadhog being dragged in and only grabbing sight of him again when he was laid out on his arse on the ground with his large back to the wall, facing Jamie. Jamie let his body submit to the bonds, knowing he wasn't getting out, and tried to make his body relax as much as possible. His hands were shaking in fear.

Frank had lit up a cigarette. Jamie found himself attracted to it in the same way that he was when he first saw Frank light it up, near his face. The flame flickered and burned with every inhale from Frank's mouth, the smoke dirty and loud as it floated to the ceiling and dissipated. Jamie zoned out to the sight of the ciggie, waving around in the air in Frank's hands. 

"Leave us." Frank commanded of the bodyguards.

"But sir-"

"Did I fucken ask you, mate?" Frank said, calmly pushing out the smoke from his mouth. The bodyguards, large as they were, put up no fight and left. Jamie sunk further into the chair. Roadhog wasn't getting up. He couldn't. There was nothing. No hope. 

"So, Jamie. I've given it some thought, and I've decided that an arm should do it!" Frank said, almost cheerily. Jamie's eyes went wide, his teeth grinding against each other as Frank pulled out a briefcase from a cabinet in the room. 

"I even thought I'd get your right one, let you match!" Frank said it like it was some sort of sick joke and to his horror, Jamie found that there were tears down his face. 

"But first, I think I'll give your hair a bit of a shave, it's grown in the past year and a bit, hasn't it?" Frank said, and Jamie watched him pull out a shaver from the briefcase. But he didn't put it away and Jamie knew there were more things in there. He dreaded the thought of it, metal twinkling away in the case, ready to be covered with his coppery blood. 

Frank came up behind him and grabbed his head, tilting it back and running the shaving machine along his hair. Jamie got a sick sense of déjà-vu as he watched it once again fade down towards the ground and into the flames. Another version of himself, burnt at the pyre. Another initiation for the next version of himself that he would hate. Jamie shut his eyes and promised himself that this time he wouldn't back off. This time he'd stab himself good and proper like Magpie had originally told him to do, and he'd be free of this hellhole and all other hellholes that would follow, similar or different. 

"Fuckin… stop!" Roadhog said, weakly and yet disturbingly powerfully at the same time. Jamie shivered once more. He knew Roadhog wasn't angry at him, but the tone made him wince and want to shrivel up. 

"Yeah, yeah, keep talkin giant. Nobody's gonna listen anyway." Frank scoffed Roadhog's comments away this time, as he wiped away the last of Junkrat's identity and looked at his newly formed former identity once more. Lookin like a proper slave, he was. 

"Well, let's get this party started." He smirked as he made his way back to the briefcase.

He put away the razor and shuffled through the professional looking storage, the rings on his fingers clinking against the metal of whatever was inside, his hands finally grasping at something that scared the ever-loving daylights out of Jamie. It was shaped like a fuckin pizza cutter, all round and pointy, but it was as large as Jamie's head and it shone menacingly under the light. Jamie at least revelled in the comfort of knowing that it wouldn't take too long for that thing to slice through his arm. When Frank turned it on, Jamie suspecting he only did so to further scare Jamie and anger Roadhog, who had been grunting angrily non stop from his corner at this point, it made a loud whirring noise that was almost deafening to anyone in the room. Frank turned it off and grabbed a piece of material, going to wrap it around Jamie's restrained elbow. He tightened it, and then while the feeling faded away from Jamie's arm as it went numb, Frank grabbed the saw and started shining it. Jamie suspected it had been used for some sort of metalwork or woodwork in its past life. He imagined red splatters of paint over it. The image was not enticing. 

"Well, I won't bother saying you won't hurt at all, because you will, and that's the point. Wouldn't give you anaesthetic even if we had some." Frank chuckled once more. Where had this great sense of humour come from? He seemed a lot more laughy than last time Jamie had seen him. It was possibly because Jamie was now back in his grasp. 

"Hold you breath, Jamie." Frank smirked and started up the whirring. Roadhog went crazy in the corner, trying to move his sedated body to just reach out and peal Frank away, but he was powerless, only his voice loudly protesting and shouting Junkrat's name. Frank seemed to hold no fear for what would be done to him, seeing as Roadhog was unable to move. 

"Fuckin hell-" Jamie muttered as Frank slowly brought it closer, and Jamie was trying to thrash away to no avail. 

Loud screaming of his own echoed in Jamie's ears as the blade sunk down, melting through warm flesh like butter.


	21. Found // Nine

Junkrat's eyes peeled open when it was night time. His right arm was in a collosal amount of pain. Or at least what was left of it. His first thought and realisation was that when he attempted to move his right arm, to shuffle around his fingers, he couldn't. 

He groaned and shuffled around, finding himself to be tied down to the chair he was previously in, a fire raging away in front of him wildly, controlled by Frank's familiar fire pit. His arm and leg were tied down to the chair, not that he could move while his missing arm was so evidently.. well, missing. He groaned again and moved his head to the corner where Roadhog was, his mass of a body sitting in the corner of Junkrat's eyesight. He wasn't asleep, but he seemed to still be somewhat sedated. Jamie realised with a happy sigh that Roadhog didn't seem like he had been hurt. 

Junkrat coughed and realised that moving made his body tremble in pain. A short look to his right arm confirmed his fears. It wasn't there. He must have passed out halfway through Frank's torture. A horrid smell rose up to his nose, the smell of something bad burning. He had a small suspicion as to what exactly he was smelling. And sure enough, shooting a look into the fire he saw something that was very arm shaped in the fire, only half burned through. Frank mustn't have left very long ago. Jamie felt bile rise up in his throat, but he pushed it back down by turning his head away from the sight and shutting his eyes hard. Sweat was starting to track down the side of his face, and he had to take deep breaths to calm himself down and shove down the vomit that was threatening to spill from his mouth. 

"R-R-Roady.." He rasped, his voice empty and thin. "W-Why are you still here…" 

Roadhog grunted first, his head lifting a little. His thumb of his right hand twitched and his mouth opened behind his mask, Junkrat hearing it from the large exhale of breath that followed. Junkrat was surprised that they hadn't taken that off him. His fingers begged to follow Roadhog's action and curl inwards, but only his left hand obeyed. 

"Not…leaving…without you.." Roadhog sounded equally strained in his voice, confirming Junkrat's thoughts that they hadn't been offered food or water while he was out.

Junkrat's eyes suddenly welled up with tears and his voice choked up with emotion. This was all his fucking fault. Once again, he had managed to destroy the only good part of his life. His chest rumbled with emotion as it shook up and down. Tears rolled down his face. 

"I'm sorry…" He said simply at first, noticing the way that Roadhog's head snapped up at the show of emotion.

"What the fuck are you sorry for..?" Roadhog asked him, and Junkrat could somehow feel the eyes behind the mask, staring him down. 

"This is all my fault. You have to get out of here.." Junkrat said as he tried to stifle his cries in some failed attempt to remain strong. But panic was kicking in very quickly. It was hard to focus on the positives. It was very easy to believe that his life was once again over. If he'd barely made it out alive last time then there was no way he had the strength to make it out again. And Frank wouldn't be dumb enough to let him go without supervision this time. This feeling, the one that made his chest tight whenever he thought about his past and the things he'd gone through. It was making it hard for him to breathe. Roadhog could evidently tell. 

"Calm down. WE, are going to get out of here. I'm not leaving you here in the mercy of some fucking…" The word rapist was on the tip of his tongue. But he saw the way Junkrat winced, and he stifled himself. 

Anger burned so heavily in his veins. The look on Frank's face when he'd mentioned those.. Things, about Junkrat. Or, Jamie, he supposed that was his name. Him on his knees for someone like Frank, for others as well, the men he'd seen coming in. How many of them had..?

He let out a loud growl and kicked his leg out against the wall, making it rumble. Junkrat winced again, and Roadhog forced himself to calm down. He couldn't think with anger now. Every other time he had let his anger take control he had lost everything that he loved. He couldn't let this be the case for Junkrat. He had to get Junkrat out first before he could even think about revenge. But he sure would. For now, he had to calm Junkrat down. He could tell that he was freaking out, that he was losing hope. And he supposed it was easy to while his arm burnt in the fire and Roadhog, previously untouchable, was a pile on the ground. 

 

"Junkrat.." He said slowly, knowing that Jamie was not a name that he could use. Maybe not ever. If Frank called him that, then maybe it wasn't right for him to ever hear it again. 

"You're still calling me that even after you know my name?" Jamie sniffled, not looking up at him. 

"Your name is what you choose it to be." Roadhog grumbled. "I used to be called Mako. But that's not my name anymore." 

He hadn't told anyone. He hadn't told anyone since his wife and his child. No one had known him like this. But Junkrat deserved it. He deserved to have someone show him compassion, to show him that he wasn't alone in emotional vulnerability. 

Junkrat finally looked up to him with those hurt eyes, the depth of which Roadhog wasn't used to anymore. It made him want to tell him more. It made him want to open his mouth and spill every little secret he held inside him. That's when he knew they had something special here. That's why he couldn't leave without him. That's why he told him his name. And when they weren't in Frank's clutches, he would tell him more. 

"T-that's a nice name." Junkrat stuttered through left over tears. 

"Yeah, well, we aren't using it, understand?" Roadhog put some gruffness back in his voice to mask the little skip in his own voice, how it caught up in his lungs a bit. He was glad to see that Junkrat didn't seem discouraged by this.

"So what, are you opening up now?" Junkrat said in an almost teasing tone and Roadhog couldn't help but smile under his mask. 

"Maybe. But first, I think it's a good idea that we get out of here." Roadhog suggested and Junkrat's face fell slightly again. 

"But how? You don't know this place, it's harder to get out of than you think. And considering I already did it once they'll be expecting-" Junkrat was frowning as he spoke, and Roadhog cut him off.

"Exactly. I don't know this place, but you do. And you've escaped here once before." 

Junkrat still seemed unsure, but Roadhog damn well knew he wasn't about to let Junkrat be sold off again or whatever it was that happened here. "You're going to have to come here and untie me." Roadhog said, noticing that Junkrat's bounds were not as tight as his. 

"With one arm?" Junkrat gave him a pointed look and showed his stump, quite nicely bandaged as it was. 

"You're only half tied up. You have enough body strength to get out of there. Even if you just loosen my bonds I can break free." Roadhog said. He knew that the only way that he was going to get Junkrat out of here in this state would be if he didn't let him think about it too much. He needed to be led, to be told what to do. He couldn't think about it much, he couldn't secondguess himself. Roadhog had to lead. 

"O-okay…" Junkrat reluctantly agreed, shaking his left leg free quite easily, as Roadhog expected, and then, with a bit more struggle, untying his hand and freeing it. 

"There you go, you're going great. Just slowly go on the ground and crawl over, okay?" Roadhog urged with as much calmness in his voice as possible. He needed to be the rock here.

"Okay.." Junkrat said, and with a wince at the pain, he got onto the ground. His eyesight went black from the pain, seeing stars, from the blood-loss no doubt. It was a painful process to watch, the way that Junkrat writhed and dragged himself in agony was scary to Roadhog. He couldn't help but have a moment to think that Junkrat really was a survivor, no matter how much he didn't look like it. But he supposed to had to be one to still be alive. 

"Great, you're almost there." Roadhog supported him verbally again, and he had thankfully started to feel the effects of the tranquiliser start to run out. He would be fit enough to get them out of here. 

"We need to find my leg before we go.." Junkrat pointed out as he got closer and closer at snail's pace. Roadhog didn't push him to go faster.

"And a gun. We aren't making it out otherwise." Roadhog pointed out. 

"I know where Frank keeps his." Junkrat said, "Just hope he hasn't moved it." 

"Okay, okay, one step at a time Rat." Roadhog brought his thoughts back to the current moment again, grounding him. 

"What if Frank comes through the doo-" 

"As long as you untie me that won't be a problem." Roadhog had a sudden thought about how good it would sound if he bent back Frank's arm until it cracked. Pedophile shitface. 

"Okay.." Junkrat agreed and by the time he had pushed the words out, he was by Roadhog's feet.

His hand grasped at the rope tightly, and he worked on the knot as much as he could with his hand, loosening the ties until Roadhog got his legs back, and then his hands followed soon after, rope dropping by his feet as he stood up, suddenly his strength felt renewed. He grabbed Junkrat as gently as he could from the shoulders and lifted him up, coming face to face with him and, taking his own advice and not thinking about it too much, he hugged Junkrat close to his body. 

Rat's body was stiff at first, cold against Roadhog's. But soon the tension flooded from his body and he let himself go limp, held comfortingly. He sighed and felt the edge of a smile curl up in his lips. But he knew it wasn't over yet. He mumbled against Roadhog's skin. 

"Did you see where they put my leg?" He asked, and Roadhog pulled him away from his body and then swung him around so he was held bridal style in Roadhog's arms. Junkrat's face burned up, half out of embarrassment and a little bit out of enjoyment. Roadhog lifted him so easily. He felt safe right there. Roadie's chest was warm. 

"Yeah. Over there." Now that Roadhog pointed it out, Junkrat took notice of his leg in a corner of the room, more scuffed up than usual. 

"Great," Junkrat had a more determined tone of voice "Take me there and I'll put it on while you grab the gun."

"Okay." Roadhog smiled to himself as he realised that Junkrat was taking charge again, his mind back to the brilliance that he knew it could reach. He knew the thick of it wasn't over yet, but he also knew that Junkrat could do all the things he wished he could do right now after they'd left this place. 

Roadhog carried Rat to his leg and dropped him gently by it, watching with interest for a few seconds as Junkrat almost expertly grabbed it and saddled it on his stump of a leg one handedly. Roadhog's mind flitted past the thought of the pain that Junkrat must have been in. He was shaken from his thoughts by Junkrat's voice.

"-Over there by the chest, in the little cupboard. It's his spare one, should have a few rounds in it and a few boxes of ammo." He caught the important part of the statement and his legs carried him to the hiding place of this gun, opening the aforementioned cupboard and dragging out a gun, a revolver in fact, with all six rounds in it and a box of six more. Twelve bullets wasn't a lot to drag yourself out of a heavily armed establishment, but with some sneaking around and the right amount of threatening they would be free to go. It was night time already. Most everyone would have gone to bed, Roadhog assumed, and Junkrat assured him of this. 

"--There's guards, but you can avoid most of them if you go through the back of the shed and around the front of the houses. Everyone has a curfew so they're inside, probably asleep. The guards at the front gate will have car keys, and we can get them to get us one, but we'll have to do it quickly. They'll have more than one guard on duty I assume and we'll have to take out a few on our way out, which means that everyone else will get up as well. But if we do it fast enough we can be out of here quickly. The wind can cover our tracks." 

Roadhog had barely listened to the speech but found himself having a sweet moment of relief and absolute admiration for the boy in front of him, watching as he lifted himself off the ground, balancing on his stupid peg leg and lifting himself up using only one arm. Roadhog wanted nothing more than to tell him how proud of him he was in this moment. But those were foreign words on his tongue. Unfamiliar feelings. He had said enough for today. He kept quiet. 

"Alright," He said as he cocked the gun, watching as Jamie came towards him, a smile on his lips, a hopeful look on his devilish little face, "Let's do this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw we're off pardners
> 
> should this be tagged as slow burn? probably
> 
> Hey also if you wanna watch a new show watch Preacher pls its so good and they need more viewers or they're gonna cancel it and I would cry thanks babes xx


	22. Found // Ten

Sneaking around the halls was undoubtedly more difficult this time around. And Junkrat was sure it was going to be. Roadhog's presence didn't exactly scream subtle at the best of times, but especially now, with his limbs still moving haphazardly and awkwardly, the tranquilisers wearing thin now on his meaty body but still having enough of an effect so that Roadhog could do nothing but move as slowly and messily as he had to and hope it didn't rain on their parade. 

They, Junkrat, had once again been underestimated. The door left unlocked, the way he was tied up, how they didn't take his leg out of the room entirely, how Frank left his weapon there, knowing fully that Jamie was aware of where it was. Frank kept underestimating him, and Junkrat was sure it was going to be his downfall. Although, currently, he didn't care what state Frank was left in. Revenge was the last thing on his mind. All he wanted was for him and Roadhog to leave this godforsaken place, and then maybe they'd leave Australia in general, they'd suggested that type of thing before anyways. And there were things to be seen, things to be done, things that couldn't keep them limited to this mess and shell of a country. 

"Just down the hallway there.." Junkrat indicated to the path they'd have to follow to make it out of there, through the crack of space they'd left the door of Frank's bedroom open. Roadhog nodded. He stayed quiet, knowing his walking already caused enough noise for him to risk it by grunting or talking either. 

They went down the hallway, the gun fastened in Roadhog's belt. They'd need it later, when they were outside, but for now, if they ran into someone he would have to grab them quickly and get rid of them with his hands. They couldn't risk the noise right now. 

Roadhog was watching Junkrat as they walked, his thoughts once again drifting back to things that Frank had said, to how ashamed Junkrat had looked. These thoughts had frequented his mind as he waited for Junkrat to wake after that torture as well, and he'd simmered in his anger. He wanted nothing more than to tear Frank from limb to limb, as payback for the way he'd seen Junkrat look defeated, like he agreed with him and the things he'd said, and he knew Junkrat probably felt like shit, like damaged goods, like he wasn't worth any better treatment. And he sure damn felt like it was his fault, that much Roadie could tell. But it wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't damaged and it wasn't his fault. And as much as Roadie would have liked to see Frank dead, what was more important in this moment was that he got Junkrat out of there safely. He was Junkrat's bodyguard, and he was getting him out of there alive. 

His thoughts continued to wonder. What other things had happened in Junkrat's life, just like this, that he didn't know about, in the same way that Junkrat didn't know anything about him but his name? And although he felt quite sick and horrid when he thought about it, he thought once more about the words that had come out of Frank's mouth. Before this little trip to this place, Roadhog had had a inkling that Junkrat was not particularly inclined towards women. It was something that he somehow flaunted without really meaning to. But having been here, he now understood that it wasn't that easy or simple. The treatment that he had had to put up with almost certainly had had an effect on his want to be romantically involved with others, especially men. Roadhog didn't know why, but that thought kind of upset him. He couldn't place the feeling, so he snapped back and out of it, his mind back on their escape. 

"Just a bit further.." Junkrat muttered, almost to himself, and he led Roadhog down the shady halls of the house that Roadhog had been informed was the "main" house, where Frank situated himself and ruled over everybody else. The rest of Battery City had devolved into something that resembled slums, all dark, dusty and cruel in its treatment of the population. 

"We almost out of here?" Roadhog asked, feeling a bit jittery and nervous to get out of here. He could only imagine how Junkrat felt. 

"Yeah, it's just down this hallway.." Junkrat let himself feel an inkling of hope at the fact that they hadn't run into anyone. Their night awakening had been quite lucky, as Frank, anarchist that he was, stuck to a schedule of bedtime. 

He spoke too soon. As soon as they were in sight of the front door, a sense of déjà vu hit as they were spotted by a guard, just metres from salvation. They were met face to face with the guard, a man who looked to be about thirty years old, and his eyes bugged out in a terrified way that Junkrat may have found funny in a different situation. No one reacted quick enough, but by the time Roadhog had unearthed his feet from the ground to grab the guy he was already shouting.

"Prisoners! Prisoners on the ru-agrh!" He was cut off by Roadhog's hands quickly snapping his neck, cleanly and without much trouble, Junkrat's eyes bugging out in a similar fashion to the guards as the light faded from his eyes. But the damage was already done. Within seconds, the whole establishment was in disarray. Shouting echoed down the hallway, and Junkrat visibly started to panic. 

"What?!"

"Get out there, find them!"

The shouts were impeccably fast, and Roadhog would have admired this home made system if they hadn't made it to the door without being caught (and if he didn't know that Frank was such an asshole). But they still had time, they still had a chance.

"Let's go!" He shouted and pulled Jamie along as they ran outside and past the neighbourhoods, the slum-like buildings that littered the streets. People were spilling out on the street because of the noise, but no one attempted to intercept them from the public, all scared of Roadhog's big form, gun in hand. 

They were however, being shot at by guards. Roadhog raised his giant fist and, with shaking aim, pressed down the trigger and watched as the head of a guard behind them exploded into pieces, his and Junkrat's faces turning red from blood. Junkrat tugged his arm along and they kept running, dodging shots as they went. 

In front of them, they encountered the front gate, and salvation felt so close. But then all of a sudden, guards were in front of them, so many that Roadhog knew he couldn't burst through. They had no chance but to halt, completely surrounded by the enemy. 

Roadhog and Junkrat were trapped once more. Roadhog dropped the gun, by request of a guard, who was pointing his rifle angrily at Junkrat. 

"You tried, I'll give you that." Frank's voice was smug when he made it over, but Roadhog took pleasure in seeing and realising that he had been quite frazzled previously, obviously because of this event. 

"Shut the hell up." He spat, and Frank made a cackling sound that brought chills up Junkrat's spine and made him curl a little closer towards Roadie. 

"I don't think you're in a position to be asking me to do anything," Frank sighed, as if to fake disappointment. "We were going to let you go, mate, but you seem to have fucked it up for one crippled bitch, hey?" Frank laughed and Roadhog noticed through his anger that the guards had laughed with him. 

"Grab him." Frank commanded them and before Roadie knew it, Junkrat was ripped from his side and held tight against his pulling and tugging by four guards. 

"Let him the fuck go!" Roadhog growled, but before he could say much else, Frank had picked up his own gun off the floor and shot Roadie in the stomach.

"Roadhog!" Junkrat had overcome his tongue twisting panic to shout his partner's name as blood started flowing from the wound. While Roadie was powerful, and large, and the wound did not affect him immediately, he knew that soon enough the blood flow would be enough to floor him. 

Saved by the bell as they say. 

The dark night was broken up by a whirring hum, further away so that it was barely noticeable until it was closer and closer, and Frank's men turned their heads up at the foreign sound of a helicopter. Roadhog's eyes flashed with the pain that the sound brought along for him, his eyes feeling a bit hazy. He didn't know if it was because of the wound or the helicopter. 

"Roadie, what the hell?!" Junkrat shouted. He took advantage of the shock the men holding him experienced to elbow one in the stomach and knee the other in the balls and then drag himself over to Roadhog. 

"We have to get out of here!" Junkrat shouted, and Roadhog realised that the mayhem was just enough to hide them. 

Civilians had started to freak out at the sight of the helicopter as it brought itself into view overhead, the noise deafening now, shining lights down into the petty people of Battery City. Frank looked plain angry, and suddenly all the guns were pointed to the machine. Roadhog noticed a word written in black on the cool grey exterior of the machine, although he was surprised by his own eyes' ability to pick it up. The word 'TALON' was written there in block letters, but Roadhog could currently care less about what the fuck that meant. He had to drag himself out of there before he passed out from blood loss. The pain was starting to fade into his head. 

Junkrat all but dragged him away from the mayhem, his one hand deftly knocking out a guard (and resulting in his own busted knuckles) so he could grab the keys to a car. Junkrat exited the gate for what he hoped was the last time and ran over to where he knew they kept the cars. He left Roadhog behind to make his way over. Junkrat had to find the car that matched the key anyway. The key had the number 6 written on it and it wasn't long before Junkrat had found the matching car, that also had a six on it. The fuel would hopefully not be a problem, because they hadn't had time to pick up anything but whatever would be in the car. 

Junkrat helped shove his friend's big body in the back and got in the driver's seat, memories of having to do this in the past flashing behind his eyes, but he shut them away. His friend was hurt. Roadhog was hurt. He had to drive them away, he had to be strong. He had to wipe away those memories and keep looking forward. 

His pegleg on the gas, he floored it and drove away, a cloud of dark sand rising up behind them in the darkness. The night was cool and yet dry, the wind slapping Junkrat's face in the open roofed car. Roadie was in the back seat, not saying much, his form slumped. Junkrat knew he had to do something, and lord knew when they'd get to theirs, where they had supplies. Junkrat checked the gas, seeing that thankfully they were most the way full. Luck was on their side. 

"Hold on, Roadie. Hold on.." He shouted over the breezing wind whizzing past his ears and if Roadhog heard him over the rushing sound of the desert, he didn't answer. 

It was there, with the cold wind slapping across his cheeks, that Junkrat realised he was crying again, the tears rolling thickly down his face. He wondered how he was hydrated enough to even cry, but his body didn't care to think about it too much, hiccupping through his pain. 

"Just fucking hold on Roadhog!" He shouted again, and it started to feel like he was talking more to himself rather than to Roahog. 

He could make it. If he drove fast enough, they would make it. He didn't even stop to feel thankful that he'd once again, as if by pure miracle of nature, escaped Frank's disgusting grasp. There, with tears in his eyes, he realised it didn't matter. Not if Roadie died. If Roadie died, it didn't matter if he hand delivered himself to Frank the very next day. Roadie had to live, he was all Junkrat knew anymore. He didn't want things to change, not again, not by his own fault and doing once more. He was taking fate into his own hands. Roadhog would live, goddammit, Junkrat would kill for him to live. Nothing would matter without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit's movin fast SON!! talon has made their first (but not last) appearance SOn!! wonder what they were at Battery City for......hmmm./...////......
> 
> but hey u know what i want happy times with overwatch team so deal with it B^|
> 
> thanks for reading and commenting mates!


	23. Found // Eleven

Time flowed slowly for Roadhog. 

He was dancing with his wife. Her arms were wrapped around his middle as they swayed from side to side. A sweet violin played in the background, in beat to their gentle sway, his heartbeat along with it. A smile was stuck on his lips, no mask in sight, like a madman in love. He was Mako again. And goddamn if it didn't feel good. 

"You're hurt, aren't you?" She asked him, and the smile didn't leave his lips as he answered her. 

"Yeah. Shot in the stomach." He explained, but not an inch of worry troubled his voice. 

"Well, no need to worry," His wife's voice was muffled by his own chest, "He's taking good care of you." There was a smile in her voice as if she knew he was safe. That she didn't have to worry about him. 

The smile withered off of Mako's lips. The violin stopped. His feet stopped moving as well and he looked down into her eyes, her smiling, sweet eyes. Her dead, murdered eyes, her life in his hands, her screaming in his ear, her voice in the dark. Her. His bane and the cause of all his pain and all his happiness. His biggest mistake in human form, her lost life slipping from his hands. He suddenly has the thought to look around and see where he is. He doesn't do it, though. He knows she's fading away from him like she always does. He asks her anyway. 

"Who?" 

His eyes open. 

"Roadie! You're back, you have to stay awake for me, mate!" 

A young man with an angular face, all corners, his chin and jaw pointed and long. His eyes, two drops of heated metal, amber and burning, were looking past Roadhog's mask and into his eyes. Those firing embers showed a great amount of concern, and Roadhog realised it was for him. He could feel one cold hand on his arm. He was lying in a bed. Junkrat.

"Hnn…" He groaned lowly. His eyes couldn't leave Junkrat's. His wife's voice was still in his head. 

"I don't know how to work your cans! Please, please just grab it! I know it helps!" Junkrat seemed desperate, and Roadhog looked down at his poorly wrapped chest and realised what the problem was. Everything faded back to him. 

His hand felt like it weighed a tonne when he lifted it, but his fumbling fingers managed to find the can that Junkrat was handing him anyway, and he lifted it to the side of his mask, breaking it and inhaling a large sigh, his lungs breathing in hungrily. 

Junkrat visibly calmed down. 

"Holy fuck. Roadhog." He said, and Roadhog nodded.

"Yeah." He said simply. He surveyed his surroundings. 

They were back at their house, his large body taking up their rangy bed as usual. Everything was the same but covered in a thin layer of dust. He took in the sight of Junkrat as well, who was looking at him expectantly, one arm gnarly and red, the other gone altogether. It had been freshly wrapped by the looks of it, but it was as messy as his own wound, and Roadhog realised that Junkrat would have had to wrap up his arm and Roadhog's stomach one-handed. And then he realised that he couldn't have gotten into the bed by himself. Had Junkrat carried him? With his thin and gangly limbs?

"How did we get here?" He asked, hoping to clear up his thoughts a bit. Last he remembered they were in a car. Getting away from Frank. By sheer luck. His heart jumped at the very thought of it. If there was a God, he was definitely on their side at that moment. 

"I drove us here, Frank didn't have time to get us or send someone after us. They were getting attacked by that helicopter," Junkrat started to explain. "I had to drag you to the bed, I'm sorry if your arms hurt, I had to tug you," Junkrat explained, and Roadhog credited the sad look in his eye for the fact that having to drag him around would have been an excellent reminder of all the tasks that Junkrat now had to perform one-handed. 

"You dragged me?" Roadhog let the surprise slip into his voice. And even some praise. Junkrat needed it, he could tell. Junkrat's face perked up a little bit.

"Yeah, I did!" Junkrat smirked to himself "Pretty good, ay?" 

Roadhog just smiled to himself. He slowly brought himself up to sitting position, and Junkrat was immediately fussing over him, telling him to lie down. 

"Come on, Roadie! You need to rest, I'll bring you food and water if that's what you want! Please just lie down, you're not okay yet!" Junkrat started to push his torso with one arm to force him back into lying down.

Roadhog rolled his eyes, a certain amount of fondness in the action although he wouldn't admit it, and then he pushed himself back, letting Junkrat stumble forward because of the sudden movement and end up sprawled on Roadhog's chest. 

They both went silent. Junkrat could tell his face was going red, and Roadhog's was too, but the mask was hiding it at least. A second went past before Junkrat looked away and pushed himself up, coughing a little bit and brushing himself off with one arm. 

"Thanks. For lying down, I mean. I'll bring you water." He said quickly and stalked over to where the tank he'd made was, grabbing Roadhog some water. 

His face burned still from the exchange. What the hell was that? That feeling, that energy? Had Roadhog felt that too? He knew his own personal feelings towards Roadhog were more than friendly but had it really been so much that that small exchange could cripple his insides and make him feel like mush? It was hardly fair, that he should like someone like Roadhog. Secure, silent, steady and fixed as a rock, and maybe those were both the things that Junkrat liked and didn't like about Roadhog. It was unfair. 

His eyes cast to the right as he filled up a pouch with water to bring it to Roadhog. He caught sight of his books, of the elusive book that he hadn't been able to read as of yet especially. Before he knew what he was doing, he was putting down the pouch and grabbing it off the shelf, his eyes curious. His mouth opened, as if out of his control. 

"Roadhog?" He asked and turned to face the man on the bed. "Do you mind doing me a favour?" 

**

Roadhog was back on his feet the third day, and it was good that he was because Junkrat had majorly struggled to find food for them both. They had both gone hungry living off of whatever small lizards and creatures Junkrat could find, and it took a lot to get Junkrat to feel hungry. 

While Roadhog was in the bed, he had read through some of the book that Junkrat had handed to him. While he wanted nothing more than to not read complicated books on bomb-making of all things, he owed it to Jamie at this point. He had taken care of him, without one complaint. After their little moment that they had experienced, Roadhog had been filled with copious amounts of guilt in every waking and asleep moment. At that moment, he had wanted to push the mask away from his face and lean in, put his hand on that harsh jaw and his mouth against that pointed Adam's apple. He'd wanted nothing more than that, and the urge had hit him so suddenly that he was questioning many a-things about himself. In the day, he kept thinking about how much younger than him Junkrat was, how he needed someone who could provide emotional vulnerability like he wanted to, he needed someone who wasn't broken like him, someone who knew how to show emotions properly. In the night, he saw dreams of his wife, and how could he move on to someone new and leave her corpse and her memory in the dust like that? But since when was he thinking about Junkrat that way anyway? He couldn't deny that he'd thought about him before. There was something about Junkrat that made him want to protect him, and he couldn't lie and say he'd considered the possibility before. But it had never been more than a dream, one he didn't indulge in very heavily. Why would Junkrat want him anyway? He was old, he wasn't emotionally available, he barely knew how to be human. And since their visit to Frank, he was all the more assured that this fleeting thought that he'd had about some sort of energy between them, whether imagined or not, would never come true. But that split moment where Junkrat's eyes looked straight into his, burning with intensity. Had pushed the feelings forefront. And he wasn't ready for them. He pushed the feelings down and lived his days in denial. 

Junkrat had found an omnic corpse in the ground on one of their runs for food and lugged the whole thing back to theirs, just so he could rip it apart for metal. The right arm he kept whole, and Roadhog had the pleasure of watching him work out how to repurpose the nerve endings so they fit for him and then, after many and many (and MANY) failed tries, finally stick the hunk of metal onto the meat left on his arm and flex his fingers with an excited shriek. Not for the first time, Roadhog imagined where Junkrat would be if the omnium hadn't blown up, with his purely impressive skills. This only filled him with more fear and guilt. Junkrat didn't know he was in part responsible for this whole mess starting in the first place. 

The second Junkrat had a working arm again, he wanted to dip straight into trying the things that Roadhog read to him from the book, which Roadhog knew was a bad idea but still couldn't deny him it. They stole ingredients, dangerous ones, combustible material and large amounts of hydrogen peroxide, which was still somehow readily available. As far as bomb-making went, they found that clear liquids had become easier to find than powders and other things which would traditionally come to mind at the thought of bombs and explosives. They found them at high quantities and dragged them back to their place, and Junkrat elected to make them outside at first, as they didn't want their entire house and themselves blown into holes in the ground. Today was another day where Roadhog was sitting above him in the sun with the book in his hand, watching his hands lay the ingredients together. How he'd resourcefully made anything and everything he needed to pull together an actual bomb, Roadhog would never understand. It was easy to see Junkrat as another orphan in the street at first, but the more Roadhog spoke to him and watched him work the more he realised that Junkrat was kind of a genius.

"-And now just put in the detonator." Roadhog read from the book, and while he didn't personally understand what the fuck he was talking about, it all seemed to make sense to Junkrat, who threw the metal together and melded it closely, the fire from the melding making his eyes shine in a way that drove Roadhog crazy. 

"I think I've done it, Roadie!" Junkrat held up the small bomb, round and ratty, and his eyes swelled with prideful energy. Roadhog grunted. 

"Now I just need to make something to launch them.." Junkrat started speaking to himself, going into a tirade and thinking out loud. "Maybe if I made like a gun that threw these out instead-"

"Junkrat." Roadhog's eyes looked on at him sadly as his mind flew back to Battery City. 

"-I could make it just like your gun but instead it just throws these out! Oh, that's a real beaut! I could-"

"Junkrat." Roadhog persisted.

"-Maybe use that scrap metal from the bot, melt it down and then--"

"Junkrat!" Roadhog spoke once more at the loudest volume his voice had reached in a while. 

"What, what's up, mate, you're interrupting my artistic flow!" Junkrat said, only half-jokingly annoyed. 

Roadhog just sighed and looked on at him, letting Junkrat read between the lines and come to his own conclusion. 

Junkrat put down the bomb and his chest deflated as he realised what Roadhog wanted to talk about.

"You want to talk about Frank?" Roadhog gave a nod. "Do we really have to?"

"Well, we don't, but what I wanna know is if you want to stay here," Roadhog said simply, to the point. He didn't deal with emotional discussions all too well. 

Junkrat was silent for a second as he got himself up and carried his tools inside. Roadhog followed, not pestering, knowing he was thinking. Junkrat left his stuff on the counter and leaned his metal arm on it, the other on his hip. 

"I suppose we could catch one of them boats and leave, couldn't we?" He suggested, and Roadhog nodded. 

"Could use the car and go to the shore, sneak on and get the hell out of this hell hole. Wreak havoc someplace else." Junkrat continued talking, almost to himself, and Roadhog let him go off, knowing it was better to let him come to his own conclusion rather than interfere with his thinking process and the way he was piecing things together. He knew they would both feel safer if they were far away, Junkrat because Frank wouldn't be able to get him and Roadhog because he found it fully possible that one day he would think back on Frank again and get so angry that he would have to be physically restrained to stop him from going and (surely unsuccessfully) killing the bastard. 

"I think I like that idea." Junkrat sighed, looking into the horizon. He knew it was better that way, and he'd told himself to leave Australia many times before. But now that it actually came down to it, although he wanted to, a certain sadness came alongside it. He knew it would be the smart idea, however, so he threw on a smile and faced Roadog.

"Yeah. We should do that, Roadie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND SO another journey comes to an end! But the actual story is far from over. 
> 
> A bit more Roadie focused chapter today because twas about time we talked about his feelings wasn't it. BUt hey, theyre leaving! frank (more like rANK) is staying behind! i hhope it isnt too huge of a spoiler to say that yaint seen the last of frank unfortunately :)))))
> 
> see ya next chapter! (dva voice) thanks for the support!


	24. Hopeful // One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all!! sorry it took me so long to update, i was CHOKING ON WORK I WAS DROWNING
> 
> but now the school year is over so hopefully I'll get back into the flow of it! I've lost track a little bit so if you find any continuity errors please make sure to tell me and I'll correct them! Thank you so much, enjoy your read!

It was around the time that Junk's blond locks, broken up as they were by a few bald spots, had grown back to around shoulder length again that Roadie and Junkrat were getting prepared to ditch Australia. Dumb as they were at times, this was not an impulsive decision, and the first step of that decision was obviously to hide the fucking treasure. The elusive treasure that Roadhog was not trusted with to this day (not that he felt untrustworthy, he knew Junkrat trusted him at this point, be it that they would never say it out loud. And Roadhog trusted Junkrat too. But this was still Australia, and secrets were things that were kept like that most of the time - as secrets.)

It's not like they could carry it around with them, if it was as important as Junkrat made it out to be. So, Roadhog still unknowing of the object, took Junkrat to somewhere in the middle of the desert, but with his mental map in hand, and they dug a hole and shoved the thing in a box inside the hole. Roadhog knew this location purely because he was better at remembering things. Junkrat could not be trusted with remembering shit, leave it to him and the thing would be lost in the sand forever. And he knew that too, which was the only reason that Roadhog was left knowing of the place. Seeing as it was a desirable treasure over the top of that, Junkrat had been quite hesitant to let Roadhog potentially also be a target of the chase for the treasure. But they were partners now, Roadhog had told him. Your problems are my own, he had said in an almost passing fashion, but Junkrat was sure that Roadhog knew how much that one remark meant to him. 

Then next came packing their things. Hog's bike would be an obvious item to take with them, and his cans and Jamie's books and a few bomb making ingredients (dangerous probably) fit inside just fine. They took with them some water and some food to last until they got to wherever they had to get, as well as some last-minute items, but that was about as far as they got supply wise, and while Jamie was upset to leave a lot of his creations behind, he was sure they would both serve a better purpose somewhere where they could strive. Somewhere that wasn't Australia. And so therefore, he waved them a ta-ta, promised himself he'd make more things wherever they ended up, and that was it. Neither of them wasted a lot of time saying goodbye to the place that had housed them. It would just make the whole idea a reality, a reality that they were possibly not ready to face, but both knew they had to. 

Saying goodbye to that place was more silent than they thought it would be. 

Walking out of there for the last time felt both indifferent and completely mind-blowing and Junkrat could just barely understand to imagine a world outside of the confines of a red desert, of a torchy sky and a dirty wind. He knew Australia wasn't like this all over, but he had sparsely even imagined what the world outside of Australia could even look like. His footsteps were light on the sand next to Roadhog's thudding as they stalked across the sand one last time. They got in the motorbike, the both of them stoic as stones, which was more unusual for Junkrat than for Roadhog, and Roadhog reared the engine and started her up. They hadn't been in this bike for a while, and Junkrat had forgotten how great the air felt in his lungs, dirty as it was, speeding past the desert as if nothing could hold them back. He shot a look that could be described as adoring towards Roadhog. He knew things would be fine. Eventually they would find their footing and they'd start a new life away from all this bullshit. And plus, he had Roadhog. That was all he needed. When Roadhog was with him, he knew he was safe. 

His face burned at the thought and he looked away, briefly flashing back to the moment they had accidentally shared around the time that Roadhog was injured. He shook away the thought, sighed, and looked out to the left, watching the far away hills, covered in red sand, speed past them. They seemed to be waving goodbye at him as they slowly merged in with old concrete that led them to the ocean. The dock was a midway point between civilisation and whatever was left in the South, middle and East parts of Australia, where Junkrat and Roadhog hailed from. Therefore it held a much more respectable view than what Junkrat was used to. The wood may have been old but it was still there, slightly rotting as it was. The boats were large, metal things, olden day like but still functioning, a large amount of smoke that was no doubt bad for their environment rushing out of them, billowing like a house on fire, marching in tune to a ship horn. Junkrat was mostly stunned by the sight. It seemed like all the earth's garbage, as far as people went at least, had flocked around the boat with pleading looks on their faces, and it was only then that Junkrat realised that this was going to be harder than he thought. 

He shot Roadhog a look, questioning and slightly giving away his worry.

"How the hell are we going to get on there, much less get 'er on there?" He pointed to the bike for his second half of his sentence. 

"We wait till nightfall. Ship leaves late. We knock out the guard and leave him on land and then we drag her below the deck with the other vehicles and hide there until we make it." Roadhog may have sounded confident in his plan, but truth was he had never attempted a plan like this previously and was as clueless as Junkrat. He didn't need to know that, however. 

Junkrat nodded his head, shrugging slightly with an indifferent look to show that Roadhog seemingly knowing what he was doing was comforting him, even if slightly. 

"Oh. That simple then?"

\--- 

Later that night, as per Roadhog's plan, they were on board the boat waiting on the deck for the boat to push off into the pale sea and take them away from there. 

The boat smelt like everything bad in the world, and especially below the deck where the supplies were stored, and where Junkrat and Roadhog had stashed themselves and their bike. Roadhog had had the most trouble in the confined space, uncomfortably mashed between the ceiling and the floor, too much for too little space. His face, hidden under the mask, obviously betrayed no such worry about the lack of space, his body language tight wound but relaxed, and Junkrat found himself getting relaxed as well. Enough that his nose got used to the smell of piss and beer, and the swishing of the ocean slowly let his eyes start to shut. 

He stirred awake when the boat pushed off the shore, having only been half asleep. A small smile graced his lips and he imagined what it looked like, the boat pushing away from the shore, the red sand and the rotting wood seeming farther and farther away, until, in his mind's eye, he couldn't see anything but the pale blue sea all around them. He imagined the cloud of dust that hung over Australia slowly dissipating as they moved further away, and as another land came into view the cloud would be all together gone. Junkrat felt a shiver down his spine at the thought of the sky, blue, healthy, whole. Stars. Shining above their heads. Tasmania, New Zealand, curving around towards Papua New Guinea, and then Indonesia, Malaysia, India. Past Saudi Arabia and down to Madagascar. They would visit it all. And it would all be so different, so ripe, ready for the both of them to pick. 

Junkrat turned his head to Roadhog, the smile still on his lips. He couldn't see Roadhog's face, but when he turned to look at him, Junkrat somehow knew he was smiling at him. He wanted, more than anything, to see him smile. His heart jumped at the sight of him, as he realised that Roadhog had subconsciously shed a protective arm around his shoulders. Once again, Roadhog, sick in his bed with Junkrat almost on top of him came to his mind. How he had longed for that closeness, more than he'd realised he had before. He had always looked at boys a certain way, that much was true, but he had never before wanted one as much as he wanted Roadhog. He'd never even wanted Magpie. Even at nights when he'd wished he'd had somebody, at nights when he was at Frank's trying to remind himself what love felt like. Never had he felt the way Roadhog made him feel. It made all his bad memories slip to the back of his head. It made him forget he was tainted, even just for a moment. 

Before he could control himself, he opened his mouth. "Can I.. Can I just..?" His hand slowly lifted to the mask, to graze Roadhog's cheek over harsh leather. 

Roadhog grunted, a nervous look on his face beneath the mask. His heart pounded quickly from the panic. An image of his wife flashed in his mind. But no matter how much he tried, he couldn't stop himself from bringing his hand up to cover Junkrat's, marvelling at the size difference between them. A contented sigh fell over them. Roadhog knew Junkrat wanted to lift his mask, to see him for the first time. But his heart pounded heavily with loss at the thought. He had promised no one would know him. Not one person on this earth. He had promised. 

But who had he promised it to? Himself? To a person that didn't exist anymore. And anyway, no matter how much he hated to admit it to himself, the person that had nurtured a child, loved a wife, he was not so far away, not so far gone inside himself. And something about the look on Junkrat's face, hopeful, youthful, made him want to make every one of the man's wishes come true. Guilt washed over his heart as he thought of his wife again. But she was dead. She was so long gone and she was never coming back. It's your fault, his inner voice told him. What if he messed up again and something happened to Junkrat? He couldn't do that, not ever again. 

But. But Junkrat's face made it so easy to shove the memories in the back of his head. He didn't deserve love. He didn't deserve affection. But he wanted it anyway. He was selfish, he was a selfish old man with a withered heart and he couldn't stop himself. 

He took Junkrat's hand off his face so he could gently lift his mask, slowly, knowing his eyes betrayed worry. Immediately, his reaction was to hide, to cast his eyes to the ground. Emotional vulnerability felt so bad, and yet when he saw the look on Junkrat's face he couldn't help but say that emotional vulnerability felt so good. To be so open with someone, something neither of them were used to. Junkrat needed someone to love him. Maybe Roadhog could be that person. Maybe, despite all the shit he'd done throughout the years, he had found his redemption. The look on Junkrat's face bordered 'enamoured'.

Junkrat took in the sight of Roadhog's face. Dark eyes, scars over his mouth and left cheek, his gray hair falling over his eyes, heavy, wide jaw with an under bite. Flat, wide nose. Large lips, a scar cutting across them at the end. Junkrat put his hands to the sides of Roadhog's face, wanting to lean in, to taste him. Roadhog must have understood, because he put his own hands on Junkrat's body and pulled him back. 

"Go to sleep," He grunted, Junkrat smiling from the joy of seeing him speak his words. "We can talk tomorrow." 

Junkrat, knowing he shouldn't push, nodded his head slightly, then leaning it on Roadhog's chest, a hand coming up next to his head to rest. He sighed deeply. 

"You're handsome." He said with a blush, like a school boy. Roadhog's chest rumbled with a laugh, making Junkrat smile again. 

"Go to sleep, Junk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments and support!


	25. Hopeful // Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a leeeettle bit short and its not my fav but i hope you like it! we have time skips coming right up soon

The ship didn't end up being favourable to Junkrat. Not that it was especially favourable to Roadhog, but Junkrat already could barely hold his food without throwing up on dry land, so the constant rocking about of the ship did him no favours once dinner time rolled about. To his credit, Roadhog thought to himself, he didn't actually throw up. He held it in, not wanting to seem weak, but the pale green shade he had taken on betrayed more about his state than he would have admitted if Roadhog had asked him. 

Roadhog himself didn't especially like it, but he was used to holding his food down. He was fine. 

Junkrat had been blown away by the sight of the buffet of quite honestly terrible food which was offered on board the ship. It was the sheer quantity of it that blew him away, although there were many, many foods that he had never tried before. He thought that this was surely too much food to exist all at the same time. He couldn't wait to stuff his face with everything, Roadhog quietly amused at his side. It drew all the more attention to them, as no one remembered them from the boarding and thought them suspicious, but no one dared do anything anyway, intimidating as Roadhog was. 

As expected, he overstuffed himself, but Roadhog only had a fond laugh to give him in response as he groaned and clutched his meagre, concaving stomach. And somehow that made it all okay. It made Junkrat's cheeks hurt with his smile. Made his face burn like he'd shoved it in a fire. Made him cast his eyes to the ground and sigh. Roadhog. He'd looked so handsome under his mask. Big, strong, manly, traits that should in every right be scaring Junkrat right away. But every time he imagined the fear, the fear he'd felt in the face of other men just like Roadhog, his thoughts cast back to when he'd first met Roadhog. When he'd killed that dingo and let Junkrat go even though he was in his way and he could well have killed him with his bare hands, a small boy that he was. He remembered the moment and everything else seemed far away. Frank seemed like a bad dream. 

Junkrat was often worried that his infatuation with Roadhog was born purely out of the fact that he was there, and he could protect Junkrat. But then again, Magpie had been there also, and he had protected Junkrat to the very end, with his very life, and Junkrat had never felt anything but brotherly affection towards him. Even when he had regrettably imagined him as a source of comfort, trying to override memories that were too painful, moments that had him lost. This made him think that maybe, perhaps, this wasn't an infatuation after all and it was genuine, feel-good feelings. It was easy to dismiss the thought, too easy at times. After all, what the hell did Junkrat know about feelings, and love. The hate and pain that he had felt had overwhelmed every bit of love that he had been given in his life. He didn't know anything about it.

He didn't know anything about talking about his feelings. 

So when the next night came, and the next and the next and the next, and The Conversation didn't come up, he didn't know how to approach it. And maybe Roadhog didn't know how to approach it either, he was having second thoughts, maybe he wasn't sure what to say to Junkrat to let him down easy. Junkrat's thoughts were all too easily swayed to the negative. 

It was a week later, on unknown and stranger tides, that the conversation came up. They'd once again been cuddled up together, as was their custom at night, below deck, Roadhog keeping an eye on the door as he waited for Junkrat to be lulled to sleep by the easing of the ship on the waves. It was a quiet night, and the sea was tranquil. It shouldn't have taken Junkrat very long to fall asleep, but his mind was buzzing with thoughts, and Roadhog could tell. 

It was as they approached the hour of them sitting there and all light of the sun faded away into darkness, leaving them without any light and hyperaware of each other's breathing, that Roadhog spoke up about it, a loud sigh preceding his question. 

"Alright, Junk, what's going on? What are you thinking about?" He said gruffly, and he felt Junkrat stir against his chest, his small body writhing in a way that made him want to hold him tightly, protectively. 

"I thought we would have talked by now, is all." Junkrat said, quietly, almost as if he was scared of what Roadhog was going to say to him. 

Roadhog stayed silent, an act that Jamie was used to from him. He never did speak much, even in situations like this. 

The sound of the waves was deafening, almost as loud as Junkrat's breathing, his shallow breaths coming up against Roadhog's bare chest, slightly ticklish against the rough, sun tanned flesh. His thoughts shifted briefly to his wife. What would she want for him, the question was on his mind. Now, wherever she was, did she see this and recoil? Had she pulled away from him for all that he had done, he had caused her death after all. Or did she want to see him happy again? Did she still love him after all. 

His arms tightened roughly around Junkrat, without his own express permission for them to do so, and he didn't realise until Junkrat's breath shifted nervously and his breathing pattern threw off, almost like he was holding in a sound. He immediately made his touch as gentle as he could, a soft apology on his breath. 

Was this his redemption? 

"Junkrat… I don't know if…" He sighed, not knowing how to continue. Junkrat's head stayed still against his chest as his breathing evened out again after the apology from Roadhog. 

"The person that you need, that you want me to be…" Roadhog murmured gruffly, "That person does not exist."

The silence fell over them again, though it was all but silent. Roadie could hear Junkrat's head churning like gears were falling out of place as he tried to think of something to say back. 

"The person I need you to be is already who you are." Junkrat said eventually, and he lifted himself up against Roadhog to blindly come closer to his face, where Roadhog could feel the same calming breath of his against his neck, falling off the cold leather of his mask. 

"I have things I haven't told you yet, things about me that are...bad. That you shouldn't accept about me." Roadhog tried, almost impossibly going against his own selfish feelings, to make Junkrat change his mind. 

It was only after Junkrat seemed to consider his words, and Roadhog felt scared that Junkrat would agree this was not a good idea, that he realised that he wanted Junkrat to say yes. To be with him, in whatever capacity that meant. In whatever way either of them could, in the broken extent that they knew. Maybe he didn't deserve Junkrat, but Junkrat had said himself that he wanted him, maybe in masked words. And Roadhog was damned if he didn't want him back. If he didn't want the redemption, the love, if he didn't want to fix him. 

"I'm not exactly a saint myself, you know." Junkrat muttered finally. "I'm damaged goods." 

The tone of his voice made Roadhog wish he'd stayed behind and strangled Frank. 

"You're not." He argued with a tone that didn't call for rebuttal. "You're more than I deserve, Junk. You're too young and I've done too many things to deserve this."

"I'm old enough and I've seen enough to know what I do and I do not want from someone." Junkrat said, his hand idly slipping up and caressing the side of the mask. 

Roadhog once again tried not to lose himself in the moment and to be the adult that he claimed to be. But Roadhog was so far away from him, and Mako so near, and all Mako wanted was to hold Junkrat until it was all better. His own life, his own mistakes, and then Junkrat and his own pain. How could he look Junkrat in the face and know that the things that happened to him only happened because Roadhog was dumb and young. And stupid, and thought he knew best. 

"I don't know what you can give to me, Roadie," Junkrat started, as if he could  
sense Roadhog slipping into his own thoughts, "But whatever it is, I want it."

Roadhog couldn't barely see him in the darkness, all but feel his body against his, his breath hitting his face. Under a flash of moonlight hitting from the small window beside them as the ship rocked, he caught a flash of Junkrat's eyes, filled with pain. Roadhog was the best Junkrat had had in his life. And if him being the way he was, broken and terrible, was enough for Junkrat, then who was he to deny it?

Knowing there was no turning back after this, Roadhog brought up a large hand and peeled away the mask that hid his face, the emotion he was sure was on there betraying how much he ached inside. His wife still in the back of his mind. Somehow, he pushed her away, the adoring look returned to Junkrat's face, caught in a peek under moonlight. 

There was nothing now. Just Junkrat. 

Junkrat, unknowing of his own actions, caught Roadhog's face between his palms. He had the go. It was down to him now. Roadhog had pushed himself back and let Junkrat do what he wanted, gave him free reign. Told him it was his choice, even if not with words. And somehow, he knew it would be enough. 

He leaned in slowly, his eyes shutting, and placed his lips carefully on Roadhog's. Gently. With caution. His lips moved slowly, chapped but hungry for the warmth, and Roadhog's moved back against his, matching his speed and force and letting him lead. 

Just like that, it was over, and Junkrat pulled away from him, a small smile caught on his lips. His head lay out on Roadhog's chest again, and Roadhog wrapped him in his arms, protective and warm. 

There was just Junkrat now, and Roadhog would be damned if he let him down the way he'd let down millions of others. He'd be damned if anything ever happened to Junkrat. Not while he lived, and not while he breathed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayyyy they did the thing! or, maybe more so that they are a thing!! hell yeah thanks for the support we have plenty more to go yet!! happy 2019 folks

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment / kudos if you liked it and are excited to see some more!!!  
> cheers everyone


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